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-----Original Message-----
From: Serafin Talisayon

In the Philippines, we scanned and studied 10 best practices from more than 950 anti-poverty projects. Why were they successful?

The answer surprised us: the communities concerned were successful because the projects leveraged on the wealth of intangibles that the "poor" communities already had: network of relationships (social capital), access to natural resources (natural capital + social sanction), dedicated leaders (human capital), useful linkages outside (stakeholder capital), collaborative practices (cultural capital), indigenous knowledge (intellectual capital), etc.  All these are described in our freely-downloadable e-book: "Community Wealth Rediscovered: Knowledge for Poverty Alleviation" fromwww.cclfi.org/kpa_ebook our website.

Many local communities are "poor" only in tangible assets -- they are wealthy in intangible assets. People who call them "poor" are people whose development paradigm is based on financial or material mental models. They have a blindfold and I suspect many of them don't know it. "Poverty" is a concept inside their heads.

Encaminhado por Michael Gurstein.

Project Description

Oraculismo is an ongoing project willing to raise some critical issues related to information access and social dynamics, as well as pointing at analogies between magic and technologic learning. It brings a critical perspective about the ubiquity of internet access via wireless networks in urban contexts. Oraculismo intends to create wireless installations that are freely replicable, in order to create local experiences that can either be understood as environments for gaming, learning or information access. One of its methods is going further in the idea of de-mithifying technology, by attempting to create new myths that include the ideas of dynamic, social and collective exchange of information.

The public face of Oraculismo will consist of open wireless (wi-fi, 802.11x) networks that behave as shamanic totems or oracles, by interacting with visitors and offering negotiated information. These totems will be able to interact with people through different online tools, such as a chatterbot that, depending on the dialog, may point to a local network URL that can be accessed only once. Secrets, keywords, incremental stages for gaining access are elements to play with. Oraculismo will run on free software and will hopefully adopt alternatives for autonomous power supply.

Oraculismo needs little to start being developed. There are already plenty of alternatives offering free and open source software to manage wireless hotspots, as well as great examples of projects that offer free information in burn stations or similar artifacts. Doing the same with wireless networks is a step further in that direction, but on the other hand the negotiation is there to remind us that there are some kinds of learning in which it is not just a matter of just clicking and downloading bits.