News.com has a good wrapup of the various initiatives for providing low-cost computers to the poor and disadvantaged in the world. Besides the obvious ramifications for taking the gospel to the world via digital means, I found this portion of the article intriguing:
Internet cafes in emerging markets have already familiarized locals with PCs too: Visit an Internet cafe almost anywhere, and you’ll see people conducting VoIP video calls.
Also this from a related article on piracy of DVDs and software in Vietnam:
Western corporations have their work cut out for them when it comes to stemming piracy. Combine an industrious, hardworking population fascinated with all things electronic with grinding poverty, and you get an explosive combination. What do you think underemployed undergraduates and high-school students are doing with their ample spare time? Rewriting the “Windows Tricks and Tips” manual, that’s what. Internet cafes dot the street. Many are filled with tourists, but also with Vietnamese teenagers. The 12-year-old granddaughter of the owner of the cafe where I am sitting now reconfigured the networking protocols so I could get online.
See also John Edmiston’s work on using cybercafes in evangelism.
I believe that the internet provides today's church with a historic opportunity .... to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love in ways which could only have been imagined in times past. The objective of this website is to explore the various ways in which today's technology can be used to spread the gospel around the world.
