I felt a flashback when reading your discussion about networks. I took a year off of work at HP and traveled around the world and I was really chasing that big "IT" of my life. Once I found IT everything was going to fall into place. I would experience that moment of clarity and then I would know what I am going to do for the rest of my life. I wrote furiously in my journal and IT was always just around the next bend. Yet so so close. Finally one day while in Stockholm I just abandoned everything and stopped thinking. It was one of the best days of my life. Somehow everything was just right and the sun hit the world at the perfect angle.

I have my concerns about finding the IT when it comes to how we can network groups and get them to use the world's resources equitably. Have you seen the movie "the corporation". I also have a website I put together after Peace Corps (http://whereintheworldiscindy.or g/Frame%20Main.htm) which shows a bit about my state of mind then. I am interested to learn. I seriously still believe that America provides the "wasty" model for much of the developing (and devolving) world. There is a devastation that happens somewhere else, someone in South America lives next to a deforested hell hole and I drive happily away in my forester listening to NPR using petrol that came from that other place.

I think of these connections which are so complex. I'd like a way forward. Having worked and lived in villages I am skeptical about digital divide stuff. I know that a coffee cooperative who does much of their work by hand should be able to build locally some simple "machines" to do the work faster, and that it shouldn't mean the expensive 100,000 dollar one that has to be imported. There is an evolution that is necessary that builds capacity.

I like the full belly project's ideas: http://www.fullbellyproject.org

Sorry if I'm way off in tangent land here but that is purely my nature. Cheers and good luck on what to do.