While members of ADCT were carrying own projects in rural areas, we observed that local information was extremely hard to obtain due to various reasons. We were unable to locate trustworthy information source from local villages, communities, or even government. The debacle we have encountered is not just a problem of non-existing infrastructure for transparent flow of information, but actually a
lack of awareness of that new means of digital communication strategies can fundamentally shift the resource from center to the edge, from the affluent to the needed. The chances brought up by digital communication has not been highlighted and raised enough attention in a island which is known to be the home of around 70% of laptop computers in the world. We began to think if we should make it a little bit different, to raise awareness, to demonstrate various possibilities, and to execute possible projects given our limited resources. If not the first, certainly it is among the first. Founded by members from Association of Digital Culture Taiwan, the project fully utilize Web 2.0 services. Puncar, equipped with internet facilities, brings digital volunteers to remote villages to Taiwan since May 2008. It systematically travels around Taiwan to teach information technology and applications, such as blogs, Twitter, Google Maps, etc. Students include young and old. It also aims to bridge digital divide not only by channeling urban resources into country, but also by exporting existing economic values in the villages. The project also makes transparent of the tools they use and the media that they generate. In less than two years, members of the project have trotted 150 places and covered more than 50,000km in this island. It has also grown to manage a fleet of 4 vans, 4 full-time employees and 30 volunteers across different regions. ADCT believes the nature of the internet can help to democratize and make transparent of collective intelligence that has fueled human development in the past. We also believe that resources can be aggregated and distributed by using modern web technologies, and we believe that only by visiting all possible stake holders in local communities and NGOs in Taiwan can we lay a ground of future possibilities. Our future plan includes bringing our own experience to Mongolia at nomadgreen.org, and plan to export the experience to various South East Asian countries. We are attempting to leverage our past experience and export the project to other regions. We also would make available our experience in English and share to the global community. All information about the project has been made available online at puncar.org and puncar.tw.
