Building the underground computer railroad (Salon) [LWN.net]

Here's a Salon article on anti-globalization groups which are fixing up old computers and sending them off to developing countries. "If you just look at their specifications, the systems the activists are building here seem almost worthless, Pentium 100-class machines with about a gigabyte of hard drive space and 80 megs of RAM. The sort of computer that went for thousands in 1996, but that wouldn't fetch $50 on eBay today. But if you wipe Windows off these systems and replace it with a Linux-based operating system, and if you just plan to use them for the Web and e-mail, they can be quite useful..." Nobody seems to see any irony in installing a globally-developed operating system on computers and sending them around the world as a way of fighting globalization.

(Log in to post comments)

Building the underground computer railroad (Salon)

Posted Sep 24, 2002 14:44 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Few seem to see the irony of the fact that fighting globalization brings together peoples of the world more (if only in fighting it).

Building the underground computer railroad (Salon)

Posted Sep 24, 2002 15:40 UTC (Tue) by maurizio (guest, #3909) [Link]

Well, anti-globalization people don't fight against
the "being global" concept in general; they fight against
the globalization of economy, and also this is a pretty
imprecise definition; take a look at attac.org, for example,
for a more info.

Building the underground computer railroad (Salon)

Posted Sep 24, 2002 16:11 UTC (Tue) by kendall (guest, #3465) [Link]

Yeah, there's not really any irony here. There only seems to be because the media -- and some activist groups -- have named this protest movement "antiglobalization", when it's not that at all.

Only nationalists and isolationists oppose *globalization*; what those who are called "antiglobalizationists" oppose is the *corporate* globalization of the World Bank and IMF, which they, in conjunction with people in the global South, take to be more about imposing structural adjustments and trade liberalization at the cost of protecting the poor, workers, the environment, etc.

The antiglobalization left -- at least insofar as it is an heir of Marx (which isn't the same at all as having anything to do with the USSR) -- will always favor a globalization of people, not profit. Slapping Linux on old computers and sending them to developing countries is the very antithesis of the Washington-led style of so-called international development.

The real irony, if you need there to be irony, is that Linux has come to prominence most in the West because of inroads into corporate IT, when the most interesting and important thing about Linux is the power it offers precisely to those who fall outside that very, very narrow slice of the world.

Building the underground computer railroad (Salon)

Posted Sep 26, 2002 20:17 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Unfortunately many opponents of neoliberalism have fallen for the propaganda and accepted the terms of debate, calling themselves antiglobalists even as they organize across international boundaries. The real question is "globalism on whose terms?".

There's an analogy to the period before the Russian revolution, when a small socialist party split into two factions, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks (these terms mean "majority party" and "minority party"). By accepting that term for themselves, the Mensheviks guaranteed their own defeat.

What's in a name?

Posted Oct 10, 2002 17:41 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

When the militarist protectionist capitalists describe
themselves as liberals and proponents of free trade and
their project as "globalisation", I don't think it matters
very much at all whether their opponents in all nations
come together under an umbrella called "anti-globalisation"
or "internationalist".

Many of the more sensible labels -- "socialist",
"democrat", "marxist" -- have been used already by
groups who have nothing whatsoever to do with what
they say they are.