Moving Right Along Back Up The Rabbit-Hole

6 years ago, when I first came back to Trinidad and Tobago, people asked me what I was going to do. The idea was that I would be around to help out my father on some things, and start my own software company. Yeah. No kidding, that was the idea. I had all sorts of romantic notions about what I was coming back to, thinking that things were moving quickly, hearing that this, that and specifically the other as related to infrastructure was either here or on the way.

I laugh about that now. As soon as I came back down, I started going down the rabbit-hole of the realities of a developing nation. The ADSL I take for granted now didn't really exist for private houses; it was dial-up. The programming contracts didn't come as expected. The local companies didn't seem to have a use for me. So I ended up writing, and doing whatever came in between. I did reviews, wrote technical articles about programming, and drank way too much instant coffee. But, as is my nature, when I encountered problems, I would dive into them to attempt to fix them.

eCommerce was one issue that remains an issue, despite the half hearted attempts of banks. There's no fixing them, so you subvert them if you want to get ahead. You use the services that are useful, and move on. The bandwidth issue has become increasingly more tolerable, and the internet service has gotten better. Contract work is becoming easier to come by. But during all that time, I became interested in issues related to the digital divide, and that lead to NGO related things such as CARDICIS, and a few other undertakings which have been good for personal growth of everything but my bank account. The bank account is fine, I know that it's never enough and that there will never be enough. I've been down that rabbit-hole before. I've funneled large sums of money through myself prior to my return, so much so that I must have been hollow for a while.

And everywhere I turned, there were deeper issues that had to be dealt with. What I have most certainly learned is that there is no silver bullet for the world, that there's no solving what others are unwilling to solve, so in the spirit of Tom Bombadil, the immediate environment becomes most important. And as you deal with the immediate environment, you realize that even when you dance in a circle, a great wind blows you around and you don't even know about it. As I thought about this, I was moving books around and came across my Richard Feynman collection - and sat around until I finally dug up this quote:

Some time ago, in about 1949 or 1950, I went to Brazil to teach physics. There was a Point Four Program in those days, which was very exciting - everyone was going to help the underdeveloped countries. What they needed, of course, was technical know-how.

In Brazil I lived in the city of Rio. In Rio there are hills on which are homes made with broken pieces of wood from old signs and so forth. The people are extremely poor. They have no sewers and no water. in order to get water they carry old gasoline cans on their heads down the hills. They go to a place where a new building is being built, because there they have water for mixing cement. The people fill their cans with water and carry them up the hills. And later you see the water dripping down the hill in dirty sewage. It is a pitiful thing.

Right next to these hills are the exciting buildings of the Copacabana beach, beautiful apartments, and so on.

And I said to my friends in the Point Four program, "Is this a problem of technical know-how? They don't know how to put a pipe up the hill? They don't know how to pit a pipe to the top of the hill so that the people can at least walk uphill with empty cans and downhill with full cans?"

So it is not a problem of technical know-how. Certainly not, because in the neighboring apartment buildings there are pipes, and there are pumps. We realize that now. Now we think it is a problem of economic assistance, and we do not know whether that really works or not. And the question of how much it costs to put a pipe and pump to the top of each of the hills is not one that seems worth discussing, to me.

-- Richard Feynman

Funny how that works. Most of the time, I see the equivalent of what Feynman described back in 1949, but instead of actually putting pumps in place, people seem intent on overengineering solutions. I've went as far as saying, by email, that given the same problem, NGOs would build stairs, or an escalator - but they would never put the pipe in place because that doesn't require a committee to do it. It takes some pipe, a pump, and the will and follow-through to implement it. I can't count how many initiatives I've abandoned over the last 6 years because of staircases and escalators. I like keeping things simple, direct, and solve the problem. Most people have a fetish with their problems, even grooming them. My fetish is solving problems. And that's why I've been down so many rabbit holes over the years.

What amazes me most, in just about every endeavour, is that thay specialization does separate things, but most importantly it separated people. Think of all these rabbit holes diving deep into the earth, close to each other. Eventually, things will connect... which they probably should have already... but when they do connect, the mass of earth hanging above the tunnel that does connect serves as a means of closing the tunnel. It's a commonality, this space between rabbit holes, and given enough weight, it assures separation. Nobody seems to think that the removal of the common separator is important. So not only are there escalators and stairs being developed, but parallel projects are happening as well.

Meanwhile, the water still isn't getting to the top of the hill. So, you go deeper. Or you stop, and you move back up and out to stand above and get a better view and assess the problem again, and work toward a solution. Invariably, you see people digging holes and throwing the displaced dirt into other people's holes, and then wondering why people are getting upset. Or they may be digging so close that the separating earth will collapse and suffocate 2 or more rabbits. And then there is the vengeful purposefulness of some, which is refreshingly honest yet sad to watch.

The deeper you go, the more you need to get back out. Even Bugs Bunny spends most of his time above ground. Buried treasure... the treasure is the sky itself, maybe.

I don't know that there is a point to all of this meandering; it's late and I am tired... Maybe it's just the number of warrens I see so close together. Maybe I wish people would understand what it is that they are looking for... maybe I wish I knew what I was looking for. Maybe it's the fact that so many solutions are being ignored because people are stuck in their warrens.

So, cackling a bit insanely, you grab a shovel...