Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wuarchive!uunet!munnari.oz.au!darwin.ntu.edu.au!b_duke
From: b_duke@darwin.ntu.edu.au (Brian Duke)
Newsgroups: comp.society.development
Subject: Summary: Who is on the net?
Message-ID: <1991May27.141355.978@darwin.ntu.edu.au>
Date: 27 May 91 04:43:55 GMT
Lines: 49

My posting asking about which countries are on the net has prompted 
some interest in the group and I have received a few e-mails. It
is clear that my question was ill-worded. One connection in a country is 
one thing - many connections is quite another.

In spite of this, the comments are not entirely consistent. For example,
one correspondent tells me that only Albania is not on the net. Others 
tell me Taiwan, Sri Lanka, to name just two, are not.

I am told that the only connection in Papua New Guinea is the Wau Ecology
Institute with a link put in by Greenpeace. This means the two universities
are not linked.

Some comments seem to suggest that remote parts of the US have similar 
problems to developing countries. I beg to differ. I believe all parts of 
the US have good telephones - that is the difference. For this reason I 
did not mention my own situation in Darwin which is very remote. The 
nearest Australian university is over 2000km away. Most, in the cities of 
Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide, and places in between, are 3000
+ km away from Darwin. The nearest Australian university is James Cook 
University of North Queensland in Townsville. Both PNG universities - 
UPNG in Port Moresby (certainly) and PNGUOT in Lae (probably) are closer 
to Townsville than we are. The difference is that Darwin is a developed 
country so the net was put into here at the same time as Sydney etc. It was
not put into PNG.

You will notice that I refer to our nearest Australian universities. The 
nearest universities are actually in Indonesia in the eatern part which 
is less well developed than the rest of the country. We have formal links
with Ambon and Kupang and maybe we can help them to get on the net.

One thing is the same between Darwin and developing countries. It cost a 
lot of time and money to get to larger cities in developed countries. The 
net makes a very significant difference to my academic life now, since it 
is difficult to get money to fly to Canberra or Sydney. If I had had the 
net when I worked in PNG or in Nigeria, it would have gone a long way in 
breaking down the sense of academic isolation which was even greater than 
here in Darwin.

Getting the net properly working in developing countries would perhaps 
be the single most important development in helping them to compete in 
research and education. However lots of other important things would have 
to happen at the same time, like good telephone and fax connections, 
better organised institutions etc.
-- 
                  Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke)
School of Chemistry and Earth Sciences, Northern Territory University
        GPO Box 40146, Casuarina, NT 0811, Australia.
Phone 089-466702   FAX 089-410460    E-mail B_DUKE@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU