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<div><font size="4">Dear Norbert, and greetings all:</font></div>
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<div><font size="4">Your willingness to take leadership here is great, and yes please include all who are interested. The International Disability Caucus Task Force on ICT is also quite interested and I will be pleased to interface in both directions.
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<div><font size="4">It is cheering to work with one of the view that the solution space is equally or more important than the problem space. </font></div>
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<div><font size="4"> hope I read correctly that the concept of a broken system holds forth the hope and vision that either it was once whole, or can be brought into being [more] whole.</font></div>
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<div><font size="4">Very best wishes, and continually at service via this email address,</font></div>
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<div><font size="4">LDMF.</font></div>
<div><font size="4">Dr. Linda D. Misek-Falkoff</font></div>
<div><font size="4">*Respectful Interfaces*.</font></div>
<div><font size="4">50 years on the "Nets."<br><br></font></div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/7/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Norbert Bollow</b> <<a href="mailto:nb@bollow.ch">nb@bollow.ch</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Kicki Nordström <<a href="mailto:kicki.nordstrom@srfriks.org">kicki.nordstrom@srfriks.org</a>> wrote:
<br><br>> The group I am thinking of was created at the first WSIS and with<br>> its side event, we have continued to work on the resolution we<br>> adopted, wishing a ICT society open for ALL! The resolution was
<br>> further developed in Tunis at the second phase of WSIS and the<br>> disability Forum hold the second side event.<br>><br>> I really hope something will happen now so as we can move this issue<br>> a bit further!
<br>><br>> Thanks Norbert., for your good initiative, do you mind to take the lead?<br><br>Dear Kicki and everyone,<br>let me start by apologizing for having been so slow to get back<br>to you with regard to this. Of course I feel honored by the
<br>suggestion that I could maybe take on a leadership role. Still I<br>think that it may be important to clarify goals and expectations<br>a bit more before it makes sense to decide that we want to go<br>forward together and that I and/or others could agree to take on
<br>leadership responsibilities.<br><br>Kicki's post and the entire discussion that led up to it (including<br>in particular also the posting by Linda Misek-Falkoff about systems<br>which may have gotten some thoughts going subconsciously which then
<br>surfaced when I read Kicki's message) have sparked something in me,<br>so that I want to try get something going in the sense of a social<br>hack which attempts to create a subsystem of society which will be<br>arranged according to principles of empowerment rather than power.
<br>Therefore, what I have in mind is not specifically focused on just<br>the particular needs of people with disabilities, but rather on<br>implementing principles for empowering people (which implies active<br>system design aimed at preventing anyone from getting disempowered
<br>or marginalized). I want to get rid of what Kicki called "disabling"<br>technology by practicing and inspiring good, empowering principles of<br>technology design, not only with regard to people with disabilities
<br>but also with regard to people in economically underdeveloped regions<br>and also with regard to the people in whatever one's country of<br>residence is (in my case, that's Switzerland). I'll admit right<br>
away that this set of objectives sounds extremely ambitious, and that<br>might be a good reason why one might perhaps want to reconsider the<br>idea of following whatever leadership I might be able to provide.<br><br>Nevertheless, I want to go forward, and I'm perfectly willing to
<br>serve as a leader of a small group aimed at investigating the kind of<br>ideas that I outlined above. I'll set up a mailing list for this<br>shortly, then we'll see whether something gets going.<br><br>The vision which I described here is of course not in conflict with
<br>more focused activities aimed more specifically at getting the needs<br>of people with disabilities met, but I feel that such a more focused<br>project should have someone else as leader while I want to work on<br>the big vision that I described.
<br><br>Greetings,<br>Norbert.<br><br><br>--<br>Norbert Bollow <<a href="mailto:nb@bollow.ch">nb@bollow.ch</a>> <a href="http://Norbert.ch">http://Norbert.ch</a><br>President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG
<a href="http://SIUG.ch">http://SIUG.ch</a><br>____________________________________________________________<br></blockquote></div>