Afghanistan Revisited

Maria A. Beebe is back.

Wanderers are getting an update on the state of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), from someone who has lots of on the ground experience.

Dr. Beebe has met with us before.  Carol (mom) joined us this time as she's tasked with making a public presentation on the current state of Afghanistan.

Cisco has quite a bit of market penetration.  Curriculum writers have clamored for less brand-based training.

She started off by showing us this World Bank video about ICT in the recent past.

Getting university curricula ramped up, as well as providing mobile phones to an increasing number of subscribers are the primary goals.

Afghanistan suffers from a syndrome similar to China's:  in pirating Windows, the ICT population is both stymied by virus prone platforms, and their skills development is being retarded, as they struggle with black box software.

I was curious about the level of censorship of the Internet, e.g. whether opposition groups fighting the US occupation could have their web sites.

Others asked to what extent phone calls were being surveilled.