A good friend of mine,

Richard Brincefield, has a vision to “promote true Global Literacy – especially the three R’s (Reading, wRiting, and aRithemtic) in the major languages of the world.”

His vision is remarkably in step with the opinions of Scott McNealy and Jonathan Schwartz as outlined in the recent Computerworld article

A Community Effort Is Needed to Eliminate the Digital Divide and Jonathan’s

blog of June 16th.

Like Scott and Jonathan, Richard is a passionate advocate of

internet-enabled education, made possible by

open source software and

inexpensive, network enabled computers.

Years before I knew of

Open Solaris, Richard was filling my mailbox with articles espousing the virtues of open source. Long before I knew of Sun’s commitment to the

Participation Age, Richard was telling me how cheap, powerful

Learning Management Systems could cooperatively enable the delivery of educational content across the world. Long before I knew about

SunRays, Richard kept pinging me each time he heard of a cheaper desktop that could provide inexpensive access to Internet-enabled education.

So Richard, I salute you! Keep up the good work. I shall always admire you as a pioneer in Internet-enabled Global Literacy.