" When a house is on fire - those that are coming to help, do not have the luxury of asking who supplied the buckets." <br><br>From Lungi. <br><br>
<p> <font size=2>----- Original Message ------<br> <b>From:</b>Antoine van Gelder<br> <b>Sent:</b>Sunday, August 26, 2007 20:14<br> <b>To:</b>OLPC South Africa Interest Group olpc-za@lists.laptop.org; <br> <b>Subject:</b>Re: [Olpc-za] A Journey into Constructivism</font>
<p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Antoine van Gelder wrote: <br>> Suggest to check the unverbalized assumption: <br>> <br>> "We cannot debate while we are implementing" <br><br>Let me expand at the risk of drawing Ron's ire for being overly verbose: <br><br>In traditional models nothing gets done until the debate has finished <br>and consensus has been arrived at through a combination of <br>reason/politics/pure-brute-force. <br><br>This can take decades. So I understand your frustration Jeff!!! <br><br>Ultimately, I believe this to be an artifact of a very particular kind <br>of centralized decision making where the information to plan action was <br>locked up in physical documents that only authorized folk had access to <br>and the power to initiate action is reserved by the leader or committee. <br><br>However, for better or worse, none of this applies within the culture <br>surrounding GNU/Linux or the OLPC XO. <br><br>No one, from the ivory towers of Massachusetts down to the slums of Port <br>Alfred, should feel that they need to get the official <br>CrustyStampOfApproval(tm) if they see something that is worth doing and <br>that needs doing. <br><br>It may be that sometimes objectives will overlap and you'll find <br>collaborators within the community, it may also be that other times you <br>find yourself a bit ahead of the curve and will need to steam forward <br>some on your own before folk get interested in joining in. <br><br>And hopefully, through all of this, we'll keep talking and debating the <br>foundations of what we're doing as the world has a way of constantly <br>changing, requiring us to see it anew through the eyes of the children <br>we all used to be. <br><br>- a <br><br>_______________________________________________ <br>Olpc-za mailing list <br>Olpc-za@lists.laptop.org <br>http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-za</td></tr></tbody></table></p>