I'm happy to see the "digital divide" activists finally criticized in TechCentralStation. The article asks whether Internet have-nots are actually making a choice, and are thus not victims, and whether its a bad thing to be without Internet access. Good questions, and there are some questions with even clearer answers: whether starving, being homeless, or unable to get a job are worse conditions than being without a computer or Internet access. OK, I know, I'm beating a tack with a sledgehammer. But it burns me to see large well-publicized amounts of money go to self-serving computer-company-funded digital village projects when there are so many worthier causes.

NIH's South American correspondant (doesn't that sound better than "my travelling friend Scott"?) reports that "Costa Ricans are obsessed with the Internet. Even in the suburbs, it's hard to walk more than three blocks in any part of the city without stumbling into an Internet Cafe of some sort. Like most other things in this country, it's dirt cheap -- about 300 colones per hour ($0.80)"