Showing posts with label Poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poverty. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

James Wolfensohn: A Global Life from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Former president of the World Bank James D. Wolfensohn discusses his life and work, and his new book A Global Life: My Journey Among Rich and Poor, from Sydney to Wall Street to the World Bank.

Check the show's website out here. Download the full podcast of the show, here.

As president of the World Bank for a decade, James Wolfensohn tackled world poverty with a passion and energy that made him a uniquely important figure in a fundamental arena of change. Using a lifetime of experience in the banking sector, he carved a distinct path in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe for the institution that serves as the major lender to the world's poor.In A Global Life, Wolfensohn tells his astonishing life story in his own words. A man of surpassing imagination and drive, he became an Olympic fencer and a prominent banker in London and New York. An Australian, he navigated Wall Street with uncommon skill. Chairman of Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center for many years, he is also an amateur cellist. But it was his tenure at the World Bank that made him an international force. While at the helm of this controversial institution, Wolfensohn motivated, schemed, charmed, and bullied all the constituencies at his command to broaden the distribution of the world's wealth. Now he bluntly assesses his successes and failures, reflecting on the causes of continuing poverty.Much more than a business story, this is a deeply reflective account of a fascinating career and personality.
Product Description off of Amazon.com

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

How Open Data is Used Against the Poor from Read Write Web by Marshall Kirkpatrick

Open data is all the rage these days, but is simply opening up aggregate public information for outside analysis enough to change the world for the better? A new article by Mike Gurstein, Editor of the influential Journal of Community Informatics, argues that open data may merely make the rich richer and the poor poorer, unless the "open access" paradigm is extended with what he calls "effective use." Here at ReadWriteWeb, we often write about the potential for innovation created by aggregate online and public data. Leading technology publisher Tim O'Reilly is a big, open data proponent as well (his newest conference is all about big data), but he called Gurstein's article a "sobering account of how open data is used against the poor..." "We need to think deeply about the future," O'Reilly said this afternoon.
This is an important read, and an important article to comb through for references out to other journals and other texts; this is a well established pattern of "capitalism;" we're touching on the capitalist modus operandi here. Very important. See also: Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide, Toward Digital Equity: Bridging the Divide in Education