Face Me And Scream

Written by: Michael Enger

For those too lazy to Google: here’s a map of Africa.Today, we’re going to do a little experiment. Go fetch an atlas or globe or something and turn to the continent of Africa. If you don’t have any form of archaic map system in your house, feel free to google it. Now take a look at the borders of the various countries. Notice how some of the borders are unnaturally straight? In a world where borders are primordially determined by natural geography, it seems strange that the majority of countries in Africa have borders that rival even the arbitrary segregations of the United States of America. That’s because, a long time ago, a bunch of white men sat around a map of Africa and used a ruler to divide it as they saw fit. Many years later, the meddling of the “civilized world” in the affairs of a continent that would be better off without them has reached the even geek world: enter Microsoft.

According to a fellow blogger, Microsoft has decided to donate tons of software and equipment to South Africa in an attempt to bring the country up to speed with the rest of the technical world. Although this can be seen as well and good, it seems that the whole affair is a ploy to counter the growth of free software in the nation and replace it with a generation of students taught to use Microsoft-branded products, almost guaranteeing that they’ll grow up to be faithful Microsoft customers.

Click to enlargeWhy are they all so happy? Because they’re running Linux, that’s why.Now, this paranoid finger-pointing seems to be a bit alarmist (also coming from a blog called “Boycott Novell” that’s filled with more anger than my rant section), but it comes after the announcement that Microsoft wishes to replace the Linux-based operating system in the One Laptop Per Child computers with their own. Again, this will replace a system that is innovative and open to exploration with one that the children will end up paying for as they grow up, since it is the system they are used to.

Is this a devious plot on the side of Microsoft? Of course. Should we care enough to set the whole geek-o-sphere alight with anger and fury? Not at all. In the end, we are arguing about the benefits of one donation over another to a country far away full of suffering people we don’t know personally. We are so separated from the actual problem that we can easily bicker about mundane points like who gets to give free stuff to Africa’s children.

I feel that the arrogance of this situation is on par with the organic food activists who shun and fight against biologically engineered food as it “isn’t how mother nature intended” when that same “mutant food” could help the millions of people who are starving to death. It all ties in with being a part of a society so privileged that it can complain about how privileged it is, something most people grow out of past the age of 14.

Click to enlargePumping useless technology into a location that doesn’t even have running water seems wrong somehow.So what should we do about the “threat” that Microsoft poses on the free software community in Africa? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. If Microsoft feels that they want to donate millions of dollars worth of software and equipment to a developing country then they should be free to do so without the online community murmuring in diastase while they type angry letters with fetid hands greased in potato chips and week-old armpit sweat. Here in the “civilized world”, a majority of us grew up on Microsoft products, but we are in a privileged position to move away from it (where able) so why don’t we just let the African nations get that far in their development before we start complaining what software we force feed them?