Bhutan's Dept of Info Tech

While the promise of integrating the Dzongkha Unicode system, developed since 1998 at a cost of US$ 523,000, in Microsoft Vista may be out of the window locals have come up with a much cheaper but more advanced software for Dzongkha computing...Developed by the department of information and technology, with initial technical support from Sherubtse College and language support from dzongkha development authority, Dzongkhalinux, with the logo of a penguin draped in a monks robe, is a locally developed version of the free Linux operating system which supports Dzongkha computing for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, emailing , web browsing and chatting with all the interface commands and menus for the applications in Dzongkha.

The software was developed with assistance from PAN Localisation grant from International Development Research Centre, Ottawa in Canada administered through Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences in Pakistan. Developed at a cost of US$ 50,000, it is the most advanced Dzongkha computing software till date according to DIT. And it had the potential to grow further.

Dharamsala’s Tibetan Technology Center Partners With International Experts To Present the ‘Air Jaldi Summit’ And Extended Training Workshops

The Tibetan Technology Center (TibTec), a world leader in wireless mesh network development, announced that it will host the Air Jaldi Summit on wireless technologies in Dharamsala, India in October 2006.

TibTec has partnered with the Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband (DIIRWB), the European leader in community-based WiFi development, and will join the World Summits on Free Information Infrastructure (WSFII) to deliver a conference and extended wireless training workshops in October. The conference proper will be held from October 22nd through 25th in Dharamsala, India. The training workshops will span a two-week period directly after the conference.

“We’re delighted to host such a significant event”, said Phuntsok Dorjee, Chief Information Officer with the Tibetan Technology Center. “As a result of developing the Dharamsala wireless mesh network, we were approached by global technology leaders to share our research, and one thing led to another. We accepted an invitation to host an international conference to bring the best and brightest wireless experts to Dharamsala. We’re really looking forward to the conference, especially the training workshops portion of the summit. This is going to be a fantastic event for the region, and for all of India”.

WorldVoteNow & Aidworld are researching the infrastucture for a Global Human Referendum. They want to connect with individuals, groups, schools, institutions, organizations, administrations, countries and companies in every part of the world. They are especially interested in working with collaborators who want to participate in the GLOBAL E-VOTING SIMULATION. All that is required is a functioning internet connection and the desire to participate in the field test on May 15, 2006. To get involved with the World Vote Field Test, please contact the coordinating office in Madrid.

Hangzhou, China is hosting the World Buddhist Forum over the next three days. China's 'Panchen Lama' defended China's record on religion, but the other delegates are reported to have ignored him. Neither the Dalai Lama, nor the Karmapa were invited. There are, however, some interesting glimpses of future policy in articles & speeches available on the forum's website

An Husheng, for example: A Brief Discussion on the Dissemination of Buddhism in the Internet Age

The Internet Age has arrived; it has accelerated the process of globalization. The Internet is not only the most important technology in contemporary society, but also the most important way of culture dissemination in this society, and it will certainly become the new century's major cultural competition occasion. Whoever grasps the dominance of the network will be able to more effectively influence society and guide the public and can thus gain strategic advantage in the field of culture. Internet as the most effective new way to popularize and spread Buddhism, has realized our aspirations of showing the Buddha's land at the end of a hair and turning the wheel of the dharma in an atom as described by the Avatamsaka Sutra (Sk.), 華嚴經/Huayan Jing (zh). The age of Internet Buddhism has quietly arrived.

China's Huayan school is based on the Avatamsaka Sutra, which contains the famous vision of Indra's Net:

The Hindu myth of Indra's Net provides an allegory of this interdependent organization. This net exists in Indra's palace in heaven and extends infinitely in all directions. At each node of the net where threads cross there is a perfectly clear gem that reflects all the other gems in the net. As each gem reflects every other one; so are you affected by every other system in the universe.

As the threads of Indra's net bind the gems to the net so do our physical bodies bind our minds and other physical entities bind other systems to the universe. Through the threads we reach each other, passing information across the expanses of space. Yet how did this ballet of information ever come about? You see new systems constantly spring to life, arising out of near chaos creating a small pattern that presents a new random twist to that thread of existence.

Capra uses this metaphor in The Turning Point

The similarity of this image to the hadron bootstrap is indeed striking. The metaphor of Indra's net may justly be called the first bootstrap model, created by the Eastern sages some 2,500 years before the beginning of particle physics." Fritjof Capra --Chapter 8 of The Turning Point - Fritjof Capra (1982) via Metaphors

If it is the case, as An Husheng argues, that "whoever grasps the dominance of the network will be able to more effectively influence society and guide the public and can thus gain strategic advantage", then Hangzhou's most famous son, the rocket scientist Tsien Hsue-shen, & his disciples work on complexity and social systems - fused with Buddhism could be central to that objective. But, compare the sophistication of senior Tibetan lamas understanding of science, dialogues with India and the West -- with the Chinese technocracy's understanding of Buddhism. . if Beijing is serious about the Middle Way, isn't it about time the Dalai Lama was invited to the table?

Jim Schuyler (blog) is CTO of the Dalai Lama Foundation and founder and CEO of Red7. Jim picked up on AFMP, (The Game of Non-Violent strategy) - not suprising, since he's been developing 'Serious Games' long before the buzz. Red7s Full-Immersion Technologies (FITs) for example,

make it possible to integrate a learning process, a game, or hands-on support for a complex technology, into your customer's real life. . . Create real-world games where participants find their clues in the cityscape, and interact by calling in for phone messages that take them to new places.. . . Each scenario may contain emails, video (presented online on the salesperson's computer), intranet and other web sites, phone messages, wireless text (SMS-to cellphones or PDAs), and simulated voicemail. These scenarios are implemented as sets of states and rules. A participant will always be in a single "state" within the scenario, and the FIT system is paying attention everything the participant does that's pertinent to that state. It may be sending an email from an in-game "character" to a participant, or waiting for the participant's response to that email. It may have several timers set - and when one expires it may send a reminder to the participant. It examines each incoming email from each participant, and analyzes it against the rules for the current state of the scenario.

The DLF hosts other blogs worth mentioning here. The One Village Foundation, which

Promote ecologically and socially responsible development in emerging markets through a comprehensive and synergistic set of programs called the oneVillage Foundation Initiatives (OVI).

The Study Circles blog - (you can download the Ethics for a New Millenium guide in English here, or in Chinese here). And for those of you who have been asking about this photo of a wifi antenna in the Himalayas have a look at Dharamsala Information Technology Group blog, and the Tibetan Technology Centre:

a charitable organization dedicated to harness modern technology for helping the Tibetan community in India. The center is located at the Tibetan Children's Villages School (TCV) which host and supports it. The center is managed by a board of directors who work closely and consult with a large group of local and International technology experts. The center aims to become financially self-sufficient and generate income to be re-invested in the center and donated to TCV schools.

With playful speculation bubbling around Google's next moves (Goobuntu or Napster etc.) I thought I might add some ludicrous suggestions of my own.

Google is one of the most powerful supercomputing platforms in the world. Tor is a distributed network that anonymizes web browsing and any other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor's security is improved as it grows and as more organisations volunteer the time and bandwidth to run servers. Google has alot of bandwidth and servers. (The Googlesphere, as presented in the company's public announcements, comrises more than 100,000 servers ranging from 533 MHz Intel Celeron to dual 1.4 GHz Intel Pentium III - that's 126–316 teraflops, one third the speed of the Blue Gene supercomputer, the most powerful unclassified computing machine available to humanity. There's a significant difference between Google and Bluegene - Google is interwoven with the internet. Physical infrastructure - Google's four U.S.-based datacentres - two in Silicon Valley and two in Virginia - each with an OC 48 (2488 Mbit/s) internet connection. Data - a constantly updated fascimile of the internet itself).

Suppose Google were to install Tor's Onion Routers throughout its serverfarms. Global internet users communications would bounce around anonymously in a massive distributed network of virtual tunnels. It would be unprecendented in scale, a network that would open up the internet to people in censored regimes all around the world. It would enable a generation of software developers to create new communication tools with privacy built-in. The Google platform running onion routers would provide an ecosystem for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their identity. By donating - say, 20kb/s of bandwidth per server(!) - Google would be in a position to - inadvertently - overwhelm, the 'Great Firewall' - a striking way to differentiate itself from competitors - particularly those invited to testify in congress todayand in two weeks time: Cisco Systems, (Google), Microsoft, Yahoo.

. . . I doubt Google can even afford to have people sitting around thinking about providing a free privacy service to the planet. For a (not-so-)small - but vocal - proportion of its users? Perhaps, - or is it that Google's business model is now inextricably linked into a downward spiral of content/user aware advertising and anti-democratic emerging markets - increasingly at the expense of its more mature markets?

India, China and Google seemed to dominate the discussion yesterday at Microsoft's breakfast discussion in Davos. Bill Gates and Tom Friedman debated their flat-world theory, the Chindia effect, hi-tech education and development agendas. Comparing India and China, Gates argued that the challenge for India was to take the latest technology being developed to the villages in the country. Bangalore also came in for comment, as Friedman recalled his experiences there. He said that Bangalore had its islands of high technology, but a few hours out of the city took you back several centuries. Friedman spoke about the education crisis in the US. Elaborating on what the Bill Gates Foundation was doing in this sphere in the US and referring to the quality of higher education improving in China, he said we could expect Beijing or Shanghai to be part of the top 25 education destinations in the future. He also referred to India's IITs.

Gates surprised tech industry participants when he said the majority of Microsoft’s research and development will remain in the United States 10 years from now. When asked about Google's business practices in China, the richest man in the world said that he thought the internet "is contributing to Chinese political engagement" as "access to the outside world is preventing more censorship".

I'm sure I've been on about this for a while -- the more precise timekeeping system planned for Galileo could prove to be a major competitive advantage for the system over GPS:

the US must now recognize that it is in a “chronographical arms race” with the EU, and it cannot be passive.

The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, York Zimmerman Inc. and BreakAway Ltd. have been collaborating on A Force More Powerful � The Game of Nonviolent Strategy, set for release in early 2006.   more »

The FT explores price targeting strategies: individual v group, and more generally, how consumers react to prices - uniform v targeted.   more »

Tom Wright in Geneva for the International Herald Tribune

GENEVA An effort by the European Union to break a deadlock in talks here on changing the way the Internet is governed drew an angry reply on Thursday from the U.S. delegation, underlining how far apart nations remain on the issue.

...

Without consensus, some experts say countries may move ahead with setting up their own domain name system, or DNS, as a way of bypassing Icann. The United States, however, says a single addressing system is what makes the Internet so powerful, and moves to set up multiple Internets would be in no one's interest.

"The EU position seems to be a compromise solution between two extreme factions," said Robert Shaw, a policy adviser at the International Telecommunication Union, a UN body based in Geneva.

As part of the BBC's Who Runs Your World? series, Mark Almond, Lecturer in Modern History at Oriel College, Oxford University, assesses the myth and reality of "People Power".   more »

If e-government seems to be mainly about doing tax returns online, then e-democracy is its more exciting cousin, promising to put citizens at centre stage of the political process, writes ...   more »