[afro-nets] Supercourse Newsletter, May 10, 2005

[Ron LaPorte <super1+@pitt.edu>]

Supercourse Newsletter, May 10, 2005
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http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/
 
Rings of Friendship
 
?Friendship... is essential to intellectuals. You can date the 
evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of 
friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.?
McCarthy, 1987
 
The Supercourse is rings of friendship
 
 
Dear Friends,
 
Rings of Friendship and IGate:
 
Soni and I went to visit with Sunil Wadhwani. Sunil is the CEO 
of IGate one of the largest firms in Pittsburgh. He is a most 
brilliant man and gave us considerable insight as to where we 
are going. We are basically creating a network of networks here 
at Pitt, in the US and world-wide. Thus one network might be ar-
chitects who are interested in global health. This would be con-
nected to networks of architects in China and Finland, and this 
would be connected to a global network. At the same time a simi-
lar network for anthropologists could be established locally, in 
the US, in India and Russia, and the world. 
 
Many different networks would be created with an overarching IT 
network, sort of a ?command and control? center that identify 
global needs in health and bring the scientific and academic 
power together to achieve this. The idea is that most of the 
time at each level the networks are ?Latent?, just sitting 
there, still connected but doing nothing. However, if help is 
needed globally for say experts in nutrition, the network would 
be activated. This concept of this is a ?smart mob? where we ac-
tivate a part of the network (e.g. Structural engineers) and 
have them provide support services primarily through the net. 
 
It is impossible to know before hand say at a disaster as to 
what type of expertise would be needed. We would be basically 
?on call? depending upon our expertise. We would provide input 
over the internet. This would be, of course, completely volun-
tary. Sunil knows the IT industry, and we see that if we bring 
the IT industry networks who are interested in global health, it 
will be very powerful. The power of what we are doing is with 
the building of ?Rings of Friendship? from local to global.
 
Global Pittsburgh changes to Global pIT.
 
We are arousing considerable interest at the University these 
days with the concept of ?Global pIT?. You may notice that we 
have had a name change from Global Pittsburgh, to global pIT. I 
got a very nice call from Sky Foerster of the World Affairs 
Council of Pittsburgh. Towards the end he said ?Oh, by the way, 
we have copyrighted the term Global Pittsburgh. So we quickly 
changed it, and Eugene Shubnikiv in Siberia changed the web page 
to Global pIT.
 
Actually this is rather nice, as it has ?global?, ?Pittsburgh? 
and ?IT? (information technology). It is exciting as we likely 
have one of the largest networks that has been established at 
Pitt.
 
Pearls from the Past:
 
Layla Abdelhady kindly collected all of the Supercourse Newslet-
ters, and put them on the Library of Alexandria Server at: 
http://www.bibalex.org/English/initiatives/supercourse.htm
It is fascinating to read back in time to see how the Super-
course has matured.
 
Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity 
by dividing and sharing it. 
Cicero 44 CB
 
 
Ron, Soni, Sunil, Faina, Eugene, Mita, Layla, Tom
 
Please ?snowball? this forward to your students and Friends. We 
would love to have your comments as building ?rings of friend-
ship? at Pitt is new stuff