For those interested, here’s another excellent multimedia piece from Al-Jazeera’s The Stream – covers African tech innovation and how the rapid advancement is shaping changes there:
http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/african-innovations-0022111

-Reno at Anthrobotic.com

There is a highly energetic and rapidly increasing population of businesspeople, entrepreneurs and technologists, explicitly striving to better their country and maintain its fantastic growth rate by starting and executing a huge variety of projects.
The economic collapse in Europe and the rest of the world is a very good advantage for economic development of African’s, huge industries are looking /searching potential benefit in Africa, this is the world current fact,
And the businesspeople, entrepreneurs and technologists they are very much interlinked with internet and IT Technology, the person even if don’t have a background of academic knowledge just by seeing youtube, google and other DIT website is trying to implement a lot of technology to the country, I can put Mobile assemblers and maintainers in Ethiopia, Not even they Crouse secondary school but they are very good in maintaining and assembling of mobile, computers, TV,

And it is not a must just to follow every foot steeps of the developed country what they cross, that is the main point what it concern, AI is the most useful tools for Africa,
Blind reader for peoples, even if they are not blind there are a people unable to read and write,
Medical distribution by using UAV and unman ground car,
We can also surpass the need of traffic light system in every emerging city road by just applying unmanned car,
We can also surpass the need of centralized power grid,
Etc.
Just like! How mobile surpass the infrastructure era.

What we trying is now with ben, Amara and our social networks is that, what potentially AI can do to surpass the infrastructure need of development,
Transcending Infrastructure through AI,

To be continue

Africa is the last resort for outsourcing. Once wages and prices will have converged toward U.S. or E.U. standards, globalization will stop to be only a threat for us and conversely, phenomenal growth rates will stop for them.

Now there is still the issue of impending overpopulation. In 2050, there will be e.g. about 3 Nigerians for only 1 person coming from the Russian federation, or maybe a more telling comparison for U.S. people, in 2050 the full U.S.A. population will be outnumbered by Nigerians combined with Ethiopians!

Most African nations are at a critical transition point. They could, at last, escape poverty but they have to plan and control ASAP their booming demography for not replacing a plague by another one, overtaxing the natural resources at their disposal.

This is where AI and a very rational long term global politic could make quite a difference.

On the other hand, the relative deliquescence of the State in Occident is driving a resurgence of primitive behaviors, see e.g. the resurgence of gangs aggregating male teenagers. Those ones are finding no participation and no fitting role models in the hyper consumerist western way of life but, anyway, are achieving local status by reselling dope to other misfits or dropouts. Then consider this sad evolution in the more general context of the staggering failure of standardized education unable to foster interest in humanities, arts, sciences, unable to promote critical thinkers and mature citizens but just dumbed down economic agents.

So when Africa is raising, we are falling back in a state of neotribalism in a “babbling society” powered by smartphones and Facebook.

A final point, to debunk the sad conventional view many very clever people still endorse in Occident toward African people (see e.g. James D. Watson), have a look at this page http://projectdiaspora.org/wp-content/2011/05/21/the-fact-that-britains-brainiest-family-is-african-shouldnt-be-a-surprise/

No wonder it’s about time for us, (ex) “civilized” to talk to Africans people in a less condescending way, LOL

As for explanations changing. Yes exactly! I am trying to write a book about addressing that topic in a broad way. In a nutshell, what if god gave humanity actual knowledge, rather than promises and prophesies? What I really need to write that book well is a method of distilling expert opinion. What is the nature of a universal language? Will aliens (if they exist) have a different kind of DNA? Do other universes actually exist with different laws and principles governing them? Questions fit for a minor deity at the moment. But if religion had these answers already, would it then just be normal knowledge now? The irony is we forgot our past, who we were, and so no one can easily claim something miraculous happened. Nor do the gods grace us with the wisdom of epistemology or deontology or ontology (the latter being the most important in the psi/supernatural/natural/physicalist debate). Somebody should write a novel doing just that – and then port it to VR. The oculus rift is coming out in december – 300 bucks.

Good stuff!

Out of curiosity, do you have any interest in near death experience research? I know you dabble in psi on your blog. I’ve been hoping you would be interviewed at Skeptiko, which is a major resource that promotes NDE as a real phenomena worth exploring. Well, actually, the host goes a bit further than that. But, while I am quite skeptical of NDE’s, it would seem the topic is worthy of discussion. If not at skeptiko, maybe at h plus.

– Ben Goertzel (author of the article)