I met the Wall St. Journal's Jeremy Wagstaff, who is based in Indonesia, a couple of years back at the Poptech Conference in Camden, Maine. We hit it off pretty well and vowed to keep in touch. Of course, we didn't as life and geography diverted our attention. i thought about him while preparing for my Global Neighborhoods World Tour, but the schedule doesn't bring Rick Segal and me to Indonesia, so I never contacted him.
I didn't even think of Jeremy yesterday when I posted a piece on Indonesian Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono's most interesting blog. Jeremy, I thought, mostly covers tech, and this one was off-topic for him or so I thought. I was wrong. It turns out that Jeremy knows and respects Juwono, whom he describes as well-respected and "a lovely man." But Jeremy believes I overstated the case when I said that Juwono's blog is changing the world.
He points out that there are over 200 million Indonesians who do not even have Internet access and cannot read what the forward-thinking Juwono has to say. Even if they could, most Indonesians don't read English, the language being used in the blog.
This is all true Jeremy, but I still think what is happening is a small-but significant-step in a rapidly changing world, and one for the better.
Jeremy obviously is orders of magnitude better informed than I am about Juwono, as well as Indonesian politics and culture. But I'm watching what has happened since I posted yesterday. The story has been picked up by Pablo Halkyard, a blogger affiliated with the World Bank who expresses shock that the Defense Minister is blogging. Ong Hoc Chuan, who wrote the Indonesian Post article that put me onto the story has picked it up in his blog, Unspun.
In the last 48 hours, I've learned a good deal about Indonesia, it's politics and its technology. I have had conversations with people who hold different perspectives in a country where I've never been who admire a government official whom I've never met. I know more about Indonesia than I have ever known and I have spread the word about a government blogger far enough for someone in the World Bank to pick up on it. The world has become just a tad smaller and faster.
The world sometimes change because of wars and volcanoes. Sometimes it just evolves in neat tasty spoonfuls. Nevertheless the world is just a bit different because this conversation has started, and it will be interesting to see where it goes.
Besides that, Jeremy, it's nice to hook up with you again.
