Microsoft is not your friend and there is no such thing as a government, declared computer guru John Perry Barlow, speaking Sunday night at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Cambodia.
The sometimes controversial Barlow blasted intellectual property rights as theft, said the speed of Cambodia’s Internet connections impressed him, and urged people to abandon Windows for free Linux operating systems as he led a panel discussion on the Internet in Cambodia.
Barlow, a one-time cattle rancher from the US state of Wyoming, was also a songwriter for the popular US rock band The Grateful Dead. He also founded the Electronic Freedom Forum.
Convinced that the worldwide computer network holds the greatest promise for mankind “since the capture of fire,” Barlow predicts the network will one day allow developing nations like Cambodia to leapfrog the industrial era and join the First World in the information age, leading them to more prosperous economies.
He tempered his remarks with a realism that spoke to the difficulties of wiring the developed world. He said it may take longer than he originally expected, but that the Internet gives people in isolated villages the opportunity to speak to billions of people around the world.
“I have believed for some time that the answer to the problems of the poor world is to have the opportunity to talk to other people anywhere on the planet,” he said.
The discussion was arranged by the Foreign Journalists Club of Cambodia. The panel included Leewood Phu of the National Information Communications Technology Development Authority, Sorasak Pan, undersecretary of state at the Council of Ministers, and Bill Herod of Khmer Internet Development Services.
Leewood Phu and Sorasak Pan discussed Cambodia’s progress in bringing the national government online and the government’s position on Internet regulation.
