Mr Davis Onsakia musings....

Mr Davis Onsakia: The battle for dotAfrica; who will get the crown jewels?

This is an article which I penned in the Business Daily of 8th July 2011 concerning the battle for .africa domain name. The article can also be accessed at http://www.africareview.com/Special+Reports/Battle+on+for+dotAfrica/-/979182/1197116/-/87uo0s/-/index.htm l - on the African Review website. The same article can be found on the AllAfrica website at http://allafrica.com/stories/201107081489.html.

National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) has indicated that they plan to track any hate speech on social media and promptly nab any wayward status updates on Facebook , racial or discriminative tweets on twitter and all other social media. The following is my honest take on this: It is important to know how to communicate by taking into consideration your audience and a myriad of other factors like the time of your talk. However, how can this be done when 'saying' something online? The internet is accessible by the whole world! Anyway, social media has greatly helped the revolution in the North African Nations of Tunisia and Egypt ( and the Arab world) and the revolution is virally spreading further to Libya, Mali and a host of other nations; even closer home, to our next door neighbour, Uganda – I don’t like the treatment being meted out to Besigye and company – it is barbaric and a crime against humanity: unfair and the highest level of cowardice. This might ...

We need to shape the future and direction of the Internet. We can only do so by joining a global body like the Internet Society to be able to put our case across. However, I'm rather disappointed to realize that the society does not have have a Kenyan Chapter may be because we don't have the numbers. We need to register, as Kenyans, both locally and from the diaspora, to be able to form vibrant local chapter which can handle 'internet' matters concerning Kenya and our beloved country. It should be noted that 'young' countries like Rwanda have a local chapter. What does this mean to us? That Rwanda is technologically ahead of us? I don't know but it seems like it is. We need to do something for ourselves and this can be the opportunity. Register yourselves at https://portal.isoc.org/EBusiness/NewMemberStepOne.aspx?refid=xd1371053hf to shape the future of this very important resource. I look forward to seeing you onboard soon.

The other day I listened to the Police Commissioner releasing the grim statistics about road accidents during this festive season. The only question that kept popping in my mind is: what can we do? Surely, I believe that the road infrastructure is improving courtesy of Government interventions, there is no drinking in the wee hours of the morning... then the question is 'What more can be done to reduce the road carnage?' As a technology person, I wonder why we cannot ( specifically the Traffic Department ) use technology to help curb the growing list of accidents on our roads. Take the example of AccessKenya (AK) Initiative of installing cameras monitoring traffic on major highways. Why can't the government contract AK to monitor any misbehaving traffic offenders on the road? Such guys should be informed ( preferably through an SMS) to report to the nearest police station for onward 'towing' to the court and they should be fined promptly. Even the government can ...

How does God fit into the equation in a techies' daily life? From experience and observation, most techies relegate God to the back seat as they take the front seat of their lives. But is this the ideal scenario? Definitely not. I ask myself questions like: how the sun rise, passes overhead ( without falling on me!), goes 'under' and in the morning I expect it to be up, lighting my room - just to inform me that it is morning wake, that is if I'm not up! These things and many others, I have no answers and no scientist is yet to convince me that this is physics at play! If not God at play, then surely there is another mighty force somewhere out there 'pulling strings' on our lives. I will be very interested to know who or what controls the 'mighty force'.. The force of gravity is our creation with the help of mathematicians and physicists. But who created the force of gravity before 'it was discovered'? What remaining to be discovered yet? The ot...

The Economist's story of the tussle between the anti-trust authorities.