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I've only been in the (seemingly boring) Jakarta area, but look at all those islands out east! Upon spending a lot of time with a guidebook yesterday I realized that I've done this trip all wrong. Oddly shaped and mysterious Sulawesi is where I should be.
Lonely planet describes Sulawesi:
The first thing everyone notices about Sulawesi is its strange shape. There must have been some serious tectonic action in this region to produce an island so bizarre. But bizarre is beautiful and in its contortions are its character, with an incredible diversity of people, cultures and landscapes spread across its length and breadth. Great seafarers like the Minahasans and the Bugis helped to shape modern Indonesia as they took to the seas in trade and conflict, but it is the land-locked cultures of the island that are most mysterious. Tana Toraja is spellbinding, home to a proud people hemmed in by magnificent mountains on all sides. The scenery of volcanoes and rice fields is stunning. However, the Toraja’s elaborate death rituals are something else. Cave graves, tau tau (carved wooden effigies of the dead), a buffalo cult, houses shaped like boats and the dead treated like the living – a visit here is out of this world.
It's smoggy here
As it is in most developing cities around the world. This is an "emerging market" and the economic growth coming here and to other nations around the world will create great pollution alongside the positive economic development.
It's got a universe of friendly people
With kids who shout "Hello Mister!" to westerners, which must be something they were taught in the classoom.
It's contemporary
At least here in Jakarta. We're here to ask people about their Internet use, and as we talk to college students and sit in their homes we see that not only are they using technology similarly to the rest of the world, they're just getting started. Facebook dominates convesations, internet cafes and fancy mobile-web enabled phones, and many users are already asking what's next.
do you think a lot of tech innovation/action will come from the Western world, or will there be homegrown stuff? seems like as the world speeds up and flattens out, there are possibilities to change the colonial/imperial/Western centric flow of development. on the other hand, when I travel around, I see how the US -- and Silicon Valley and Alley in particular -- still is warp years ahead of anyone else.
ReplyDeleteI think it will flow both ways-- US to countries like Indonesia, but also the other way.
ReplyDeleteHere's an article on the Indonesian online community Kaskus that our head researcher Todd Hausman found: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/11/16/kaskus-delves-serious-business.html
They're leveraging established US technology to do their own thing. How long before an Indonesian expat brings some of this innovation back home?
great post, and interesting questions come up from it. Like Josh-n, I wonder if Indonesia will be able to achieve a level of development that allows them to innovate... but then I think about what do we define as "innovation". Is it only in terms of internet services? Indonesia's people will not need services like twitter or other nice but not fundamental services for a long time. What they need is innovation in terms of health, education, social services, and even politics! And their problem, shared by the majority of societies in the developing countries, in my opinion, is that this kind of innovation is considered as "subversive" by their own governments and ruling classes... so yeah, I am somewhat skeptical about their immediate future -- the good thing about internet is that it *might* bring information (from foreign media) about their own situation, pushing some groups on to being more active in the social transformation they need :-)
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