Today’s Le Monde has a serious story on Sergio Cabral, the Governor of Rio de Janeiro, and his idea to bring free Wi–Fi to favelas (vecindades or ghettos). The program is being touted as a way to help “liberate” the Brazilian poor by helping to socially integrate them with the rest of the world.
I guess Cabral isn’t on the net much. And if he is, he’s more likely to be on Facebook than MySpace according to a UC Berkeley study. Unless you already know somebody it isn’t the great vehicle of integration that he thinks. I admit that I am a Facebook guy. It’s mostly a tool to help me manage my already large network of mostly professional friends. The net really mirrors the divisions already in society. What poor Brazilians likely need is better education, running water, and access to political power (although the government has implemented more programs and has been actively taking down drug cartels lately). If favela residents can build enough clout to make real public relationships with power brokers or, better still, become power brokers themselves, then maybe they will have a presence on the net that reflects their new-found social power. But, let me reiterate, that liberation is going to have to be won the old fashioned way through organizing and speaking truth to power.
Cockroach People 