The Bit Torrent Effect
October 22, 2009 on 10:39 am
Filed Under:Other Stuff
“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” – H.E. Luccock
The year 2000 was around 10 years ago which means you are familiar with torrents on the internet, if you are not it means the kettle needs to be taken off your stove, your insulin injection is due in 5 mins and you forgot to turn off the sprinklers in the back rose garden OR the house in which you live, has a large stone upon it. If neither of the latter two applies to you, you will probably feel patronised in the next paragraph. Torrents are a way of sending, say, licence-free open-source and trial software and Paris Hilton media over the internet. It does this by making every computer that has a copy of said item give a little piece of the item to the computer downloading it. When you have millions of computers on the internet that have the item giving our poor little computer lots of little bits of the item, eventually our poor little computer has enough bits to put together that item. This concept is called “sharing”. Do you see where this is going?
According to Reuters.com, the number of personal computers on the internet recently surpassed 1 billion. Thing is, computers are more than happy to share stuff with each other. According to the World Bank, there are 1.4 billion people in the world living on under US$2 per day. They also say the poverty line is drawn at people living on under US$1.25 per day. I don’t know about you, but that’s not even enough for me to get a coffee from Starbucks on the way to work in the morning and if you gave that to a homeless guy where I’m from, he would probably throw it back at you. By these calculations that means they should not be below the poverty line if they live on US$3 per day, or US$1095 per year. Now I’m not saying this is ideal, but stick with me here.
Without taking into account the fact that 1.4 billion people leaves us with 5.3 billion people living above this poverty line, at least 1 billion of these “non-poverty line” people are sitting behind a personal computer that costs just on average around, say, US$1095. Now I cannot afford to pay that outright, but over a year, sure, no problem. I could break my US$1095 torrent into little bits, and send them around the world along with another one billion people. Right? Have we saved the world now? No.
Now there’s not just one licence-free open-source program on the internet, there are lots. Our poor little computer needs plenty of things to be a fully fledged productive member of the 1 billion computers on the internet so, easily enough; it gets lots of little bits, of lots of little programs. I think I’ve patronised you enough now, so here’s my point…
The power of many is enormously underestimated or at least ignored in today’s developed societies when it comes to issues that don’t involve personal gain. I admit it is hard to be constantly aware that someone is watching their child starve to death halfway across the globe in Africa while you are hard at work behind your US$1095 computer coding open-source applications, or relaxing at night downloading Paris Hilton torrents. But it shouldn’t be hard. If everyone could be aware of these things more often, and do something small, more often, then the BitTorrent Effect will start making changes, indeed it already has as awareness has risen in the past few decades.
This is not a new concept, and many people are now swapping the traditional overseas vacation with “eco-tourism” and “meaningful travel”, but you don’t have to spend a month at a Rwandan orphanage bottle feeding a baby you named “The little fella with all the syllables” to help combat child welfare. Every day you can do something small and simple to help and be part the solution to these huge and complex problems.
When you see a Red Cross or other charity collection tin, it takes you less than 20 seconds to put something in it. Are you reading this book at home? Is there a light on in the house you aren’t using? Turn it off. Buy coffee that is Fair Trade branded. Go buy your mother something from Oxfam, and stop biting your fingernails. Better still visit Michael Norton’s www.365act.com and get your daily “thing to do” to help change the world. The main point is, be active, be infectious about it, and help spread the torrent.
Best Mates.
Kiva: Help give someone you don’t know a fair go.
October 6, 2009 on 4:24 pm
Filed Under:News
Junrey Alamin fixes electronics and appliances in his village Dalacon, Phillipines. On June 4th this year, Paglaum Multi-Purpose Cooperative, a lending company funded by private lenders via Kiva.org, lent Junrey US$150 to buy equipment and materials for his business. Although Junrey lives below the poverty line, he had paid the money back in full by August, 4 months early.
Here’s some more info from the site:
“Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.”
“Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.”
“The people you see on Kiva’s site are real individuals in need of funding – not marketing material. When you browse entrepreneurs’ profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need.”
“ Kiva partners with existing expert microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to outstanding entrepreneurs from impoverished communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.”
“Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and are waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money.”
What an awesome idea, infact Time Magazine voted it one of the World’s best websites for 2009.