I've got a little bit before my flight back to California. I do miss

Karine; it will be good to see her again. It will be good to be

surrounded by English again, to be surrounded by geeks and make jokes

about operating systems and where I can work 14 hour days on things

that make me happy and not worry if my service is going to go fall

over while I explore some remote village.

I sit down at the restaurant here. There is something about seeing

the "Munich Breakfast" on the menu, which feature two veal sausages

with sweet mustard, a pretzel, and the Paulaner Weissbier that makes

me very happy. You really have to give mad props to a culture that

wakes up in the morning and has a BREAKFAST of sausages and beer and

then goes out to make some of the most highly engineered products in

the world. That's just outstanding. I lick the beer's head off my

lips as I take in my surroundings.

I got in a few last hours of sleep at W's. They saw I was pretty

much passing out already and, with another 24+ hours before bed, we

all thought it would be a good idea to crash. W graciously woke up

with me in the wee hours of the morning and walked me to a cab, even

changing a few American dollars and tossing me a five dinar coin with

which to pay the taxi.

On the flight to Frankfurt, I sit next to Jabloun, a Tunisian businessman who

turns out to be the engineer responsible for all of Coca Cola's

bottling operations in Tunisia. (And it's not just Coca Cola, but

also the local Tunisian soda Boga, and Schweppes. Sprite,

incidentally, has bought the rights to manufacture Boga. Apparently

anti-American sentiments have dramatically affected the purchase of

Coca Cola (which was much tastier than American Coke, IMHO - and

this coming from someone who doesn't like colas), but that doesn't

really matter since folks are just drinking Boga instead, and, while

Boga is Tunisian, it's made and bottled in pretty much the same

place. Jabloun is on his way to Germany, Russia, and elsewhere to

discuss business matters. He tells me with great enthusiasm about

how Tunisians can hack any anti-copying system on the planet; that

Tunis, after Canada, was the first to crack the latest round of

encrypted satellite channels and how, for 2TD (~$1.50) you can get

a card in Tunis that will let you tune into any channel you'd like

for free. My observations back up this statement. This man, the

Director-General of Coca Cola's only bottling operation in

Tunisia, is telling me how he understands how to disassemble

programs with SoftICE, trace them, and break their encryption. He

does it for fun. note to self - don't try to sell software in

Tunisia, ever. Microsoft has no chance here. These guys couldn't

be left behind even if the world was trying. They're going to get

their hands on the latest stuff, period. This reinforces my belief

that smart people are to be found in every corner of the planet. I

mean, really, folks like this just can't be held back. Jabloun's

kids have studied in the UK and Germany now, are fluent in at least

four languages, and are engaged in sciences and music. They have

five computers and a laptop at home.

I'm amazed to discover that Jabloun, a rich, respected, and

accomplished engineer, is afraid to visit the USA. He has read in the

local Arabic papers that Americans hate Arabs and people who look

like him. He is bald and well-dressed, with a sharp suit and tie and

gold rimmed glasses behind which gleam eyes that say "I'M SMART!" -

he would look every bit the part in any board room in America. But he

has been afraid that he would be harassed or violently attacked in

the US. It makes me very sad to hear that even among well-educated

Arabs there's a chalking-up of America as being unfriendly and

inaccessible to them. I tell him America's not totally like that;

that we have mosques and Arabs and people from all over the world who

all believe different things and even though customs may give him

trouble, Americans are genreally friendly to people who are also

friendly and that he absolutely should come to one of the conferences

he's been invited to (but previously declined). He seems to think

about it. Before we get off the aircraft, he tells me I've changed

his mind and that he'll go to America now. This makes me happy; a

small victory. I feel like we Americans travelling abroad have to do

what we can to reverse the effects of Bush's utter lack of diplomacy.

By showing we're not all mean, bigoted people, perhaps we can truly

win some hearts and minds back. The ideal thing would be some kind of

global outreach campaign by American muslims to say "Hey! It's okay

here!" Apparently the "We are Americans" campaign (where people of

all ethnic backgrounds and beliefs were pictured as Americans) went

pretty well over here, where it was seen. This both surprised me, as

I hadn't realized that had made it over here given that it was

generally directed towards Americans as "Hey, don't beat up that guy

wearing a turban, he had nothing to do with 9/11" kind of a message,

and made a lot of sense to me. Most people worldwide see America as a

nation of white, English-only Christians intent on taking their

Fundamentalism to the world through violence if needed, much like many

Americans see much of the world as a bunch of brown, Arabic-only

Muslims intent on taking their Fundamentalism to the world. This

image must be fixed, and post-haste, for the benefit of Americans,

the world, and global commerce. Because when smart people are avoiding

the US, everybody loses.

What is the information society?

The information society is a world that knows no borders, where

people capable of novel expression in any form can perform for a

nearly limitless audience. The information society is Teilhard's

noosphere. What's happening to the noosphere is the reverse of

what happens to a human brain with Alzheimer's - the axon sheaths

of interpersonal communications are getting myelinated. In the

past, a few elite would have friends abroad via post - "frequent

correspondance" meant you'd hear from someone once or twice a year.

Then airmail came along and penpals became the domain of the

bourgeois; you could hear from someone in a week or two and the

volume of correspondance began to rise by almost every measure.

International calling cards and email gave rise to the next

generation of many messages a day exchanged. Now we have instant

messaging and online conferencing, which enable free, live

interchange with correspondants around the world. And this

technology is free of cost once one has a computer and Internet

access. And these are coming rapidly down in price as well. The

information society is here, has been here, and is only getting

more dense and more surprising. It will be a meritocracy of ideas,

where the very best content and most useful tools get wide

exposure and perhaps acquired or sponsored by corporations.

Pockets of the information society that resist will be routed

around until they adopt, and the disparities in wealth and

accomplishment between those denied and granted access will be

ever greater.

It was exciting to see J coming back from the Summit totally

pumped about computer technology, wanting to learn everything,

wanting to prove himself. This inner struggle, this desire to

succeed in spite of odds, can propel even the lowliest to great

heights.

On the television, there were a number of ads in Arabic showing

the people of Iraq breaking free of their chains and voting,

pointing viewers to futureiraq.org. I wonder if the US government

took out these ads. There's also an Arabic Oprah Winfrey; the show

is clearly edited in that vein, albeit still not very well. Arabic

television, while truly enthusiastic, does not yet have the

production standards of Hollywood. It's interesting to be able to

observe this quickly and hard to put one's finger on, just like

how you can tell the difference between a good and bad television

show with about ten seconds of viewing with the audio muted. It's

just visceral.

J was loudly and longly chided on the bus a few days ago when I

paid my own bus fare. "This man is your friend?" the fare collector

asked me incredulously. I vigorously assented. "NO," she said,

"This man is NOT your friend. You must find another friend." Arabic

hospitality seems to be more than implicit; I guess you get a bit

of a beating if you fall short of others' definitions of

hospitality. Crazy. I still think Jamil was a wonderful host.

I'm surprised to see that even the cheap radios in the taxicabs

seem to be outfitted with some kind of FM-text system that shows

the characters of the name of the station. It's one of a few

things, like the proliferation of free 800-channel satellite, that

surprise me in being ahead of the US.

As with Germany, it seems there aren't really suburbs in Tunisia.

It goes right from four-story apartment buildings to empty space.

There aren't big, solo houses that stand apart from the

neighborhood. Even the rich just have very nice apartments, or

maybe a whole floor of a building. But not their own home with a

lawn; that's just odd. It's funny to think that the American

dream is something artificial and maybe not even understood or

desired in other countries.

That started me to thinking; what's the point of suburbs? Isn't it

a de-urbinization of sorts? A desire to move away from other

people? Humans for millions of years have been congregating where

other humans can be found - I guess from an anthropological

perspective it's a little wierd for bunch of humans to spread

themselves out.

Quick Notes:

• Many Tunisians earn around 12TD/day, or ~$10.
• Hannibal and Carthage are pretty dominant cultural icons in Tunisia, which makes sense given that that's all most people know from this country.
• Cab rides to/from downtown & the airport 3-5 TD.
• People are universally startled to find a white American who speaks more French than a broken & thickly-accented phrase.

I move to the window and a Lufthansa flight comes in. Much to my

surprise, a number of new p2p APs show up in NetStumbler:

Salonspaware, hpsetup, microsoft, vn1-scu-wl, WLAN,

and LeapNetworks.net. Interesting; looks like the plane must have

been packet with wireless. There are at least 20 wireless devices

advertising as APs on board of some sort.

I'm off to find my gate...and maybe warwalk Frankfurt International.