Bamboo for Pandas
February 8, 2008 – Libby Davy – Print
Many of you will have heard me talk about the need for pandas to have bamboo. Not just enough to survive, but corridors to link them together so they can mate.
People are like that. Bamboo feels like ideas. When I meet people like Ben Segal, it’s like finding air, water, food. The essential stuff for me to not just survive, but thrive.
“I am convinced that today the main challenges for the Internet (and hence ISOC) are more social and economic than technical, and that progress depends on effective programs of education and dialogue.”
From Ben’s election statement as a trustee for the Internet Society in Geneva.
As someone working the in the field of education with an emphasis on dialogue through blogging, I couldn’t agree more.
Perhaps this is why, sitting here blogging at LIFT08, I am delighted to see several speakers that help us explore these ideas.
But there is still an underlying frustration I am feeling at LIFT which, apologies to anyone that has been caught in the clutches of one of my angry rants today, centres on this.
We keep exploring the “How”, the technical side I guess and how the social can be appropriated in support of the technical or the economic. But what we are still lacking in this space is the “Why?”
Why are we wanting to innovate, to create, to advance technology in society, to overcome challenges and take up opportunities.
I can only hope that the wonderful inclusion of the sustainablilty section will be emphasised in the takeaways summary.
So much potential in the room… where will people direct it….
[...] Alas, it was not to be. In one sense. In another, we are all working together - towards similar goals, wherever we are. Social justice, sustainability of life on earth, human and animal rights. The work needs doing, so we unite to do it. With or without Anita, her spiritual forebears or descendants. We are one point in the continuum, all linked going through time and space. We are not alone. There is bamboo. [...]