Free Society = Read-Write Society: A Culture of Openness and Free Collaboration

What made and makes the development of free software, free content
and free infrastructures – alternatives to centralized systems of
knowledge distribution and development possible? What made and makes
the system of the many in contrast to the system of the few and
powerful possible?

The Internet is an important factor, but indeed it is much more the
culture of openness and free collaboration that constitutes the basis
for free layers. It is a cultural change that took off in the aftermath
of the peaceful revolutions in the world and the fall of the Berlin
wall 1989. A short time when people took politics in their own hands
and when “the end of history” was proclaimed by Francis Fukuyama. Many
criticized him and regarded this statement as invalid proven by the
aftermaths. Looking at what happened at a level far apart from daily
superficial politics – how people started to create free layers – I
find it rather valid, if it is slightly rephrased to “the end of old
history”.

In the times before 1989 few people were able to take part in the
production of content and culture. Afterwards more and more people
simply safeguarded their rights and started collaborating on the most
different topics. This is not only a change of how people behave but
indeed this changes the way reality is perceived. The production of
content and free publication is a lively way to write our own history.

The people’s history is completely opposite to the way history “was
made”, or often we could even use the word “fabricated”, before. It
includes all its facets and different opinions of people involved and
enables a look closer to the actual happenings of a time than any
historian could possibly allow us to see. The many different views and
descriptions are presented directly and indirectly. The observations,
ideas and intentions of producers can be directly observed in the
actual content they produce, like in the articles of Wikipedia, or in
the way software programs function, like Linux. Indirect conclusions
about the world we live in can be drawn through the transparency and
openness of the productions processes in free layers, e.g. the version
history in Wikipedia or the documentation, the open sources and
versions in the free software production.

The openness of free layers allows everyone to be a historian. “In
the old days” to be a historian was a profession limited to a few.
Until today historians were the historians of the powerful, the ones
that provided them with the opportunities to work or simpler said with
food and shelter. They wrote down what the future world would know of a
time. Isn’t it therefore mostly the history of the winners that we
quote today?

It changes in the aftermath of the freedom movements in 1989 and the
growth of the free Internet (“as in freedom”, Stallman). This is “the
begin of a new history”, where people write their own history in blogs,
forums, mailing lists and wikis – the (his)stories of the many not the
few.

In the Read-Write Society (Lawrence Lessig) people create their own
content, own software, own infrastructures, own hardware. And thus they
create their own realities, their own truths, their own society. More
and more label their productions as free – free software, free wireless
networks, free music, free videos, free texts and whole free
encyclopedias. Free licenses allow people to copy and redistribute
their work and the works of others freely to and by anyone and
sometimes even to change and to sell it – the start of completely free
layers.

Nevertheless looking at the real number of people actually
participating in creating these free layers – publishing content or
producing free software, it is still a small number of people. However
many more already profit from this information and knowledge gathering.
Wikipedia is one of the top sites on the Internet. Imagine what else
can be achieved through this culture of freedom.

Werbung – Kernaufgabe der Suchmaschinenbetreiber?

Theo Röhle von der Universität Hamburg hat einen interessanten Beitrag über die Erhebung von Nutzerdaten bei Suchmaschinen, insbesondere bei der personalisierten Suche geschrieben. In ‘Think of it first as an advertising system’: Personalisierte Online-Suche als Datenlieferant des Marketings” (pdf) kommt er zu dem Ergebnis, "dass die gezielte Vermarktung von Werbeplätzen sich zur Kernaufgabe der Suchmaschinenbetreiber entwickelt hat." Die Personalisierte Online-Suche wie sie Google und Yahoo anbieten, können zwar für viele Nutzer die Suchergebnisse verbessern – also die Relevanz für den Einzelnen erhöhen -, durch die Protokollierung und Auswertung des Userverhaltens wird der Nutzer jedoch selbst überwachbar und persönliche Daten werden (möglicherweise gar zeitlich unbeschränkt) für kommerzielle Zwecke (aus)nutzbar.

Aufgrund des kommerziellen Hintergrunds der großen Suchmaschinen ist dies meiner Meinung nach nicht verwundernswert. Als profitorientierte Unternehmen sind sie in der Tat gezwungen, jedwede Möglichkeit Einnahmen zu erzielen zu nutzen.

Auch Theo Röhle kommt zu dem Schluss:

(Es) "wird deutlich, dass die zunächst zur Verbesserung der Suchergebnisse erhobenen Nutzerinformationen einem immer stärkeren kommerziellen Verwertungsdruck ausgesetzt sind."

Die Frage stellt sich daher: Inwieweit will ich als Nutzer da mitmachen? Und welche Alternativen gäbe es?

Mahalo – New Entry in the Search Eengine Market. An Alternative?

Jason McCabe Calacanis is the founder of Mahalo.com. With Mahalo he tries to establish a new search engine based on user submitted search result pages. In order to motivate people to write search result pages Mahalo pays part time guides 10 to 15 USD. Part time guides who submit a search page result that is accepted by full time guides also get credited as the original writer of pages.
How do you become a guide? At first you have to register and fill out an application form. They want to know your personal details like phone, address etc. as well as your blog, user names of sites like Wikipedia, delicious, Flickr, Youtube and so on. Then they ask about the why you want to write search results, what kind of search results and what else you have to say. Finally you have to choose about the payment of your work. Currently US citizens can chose to receive 10-15 USD per accepted search result page themselves or donate it to the Wikimedia Foundation (it is planned to add other organizations later), non-US citizens can only choose to donate it.
Are they good or bad? It seems like Mahalo wants to belong to the good guys. So they have 250.000 USD in donations set aside for the Wikimedia Foundation this year. This is impressive, but it has to be seen if part time guides also choose to donate to Wikipedia.

Mahalo Greenhouse: … Oh yeah, if we accept your search result we will pay you $10 to $15 per search result (the range is based on how many search results you’ve completed: more here). Now, if you’re a disciple of Yochi and you absolutely will not work on a web-based project for money, we’ve got an amazing proposition for you: make the web better by writing spam-free search results and we’ll donate your fees to the Wikimedia Foundation. So, you can make the world better 2x: first by making clean, spam-free search results and second by helping keep the Wikipedia running (those server bills ain’t cheap!). We’ve earmarked up to $250,000 in donations to the Wikipedia this year. blog.mahalo.com/?p=15

Even if some will choose to donate their work to the Wikimedia Foundation it is clear that Mahalo in the first place is not about building a community. It is about making money (or possibly for some guides to earn an income?) even if they try to appeal to different users, as well those with intrinsic motivations: “…you can make the world better 2x”. Investors like Sequoia Capital's Michael Moritz, who invested in Yahoo and Google when they were still start ups, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who became a billionaire after selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo, AOL Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis, who also owns the National Hockey League's Washington Capitals, Elon Musk, co-founder of online payment service PayPal, NewsCorp, CBS Corporation and Hubert Burda Media – they want to gain a profit in the end.
So what is the calculation of Jason Calacanis with Mahalo?

As for funding, if the Google AdSense units currently on the site don't cover costs, Calacanis says investors … have given him enough money to run the company for at least five years. (searchengineland.com/070530-180000.php)

If Mahalo pays up to 15 Dollars per submitted search page it means an ad that costs on average 7 Cents per click should be clicked about 214 times in order to recapture the cost of a search page of a “part time guide”. However, you also have to add the server costs, cost of the full time guide checking and so on. Still though, over time it seems possible for popular search pages to recapture the cost, but what about not so popular search terms and search terms that do not exist? Jim Lanzone, CEO of ask.com said "On any given day, 60 percent of the search requests we get, we have never seen before." (sfgate.com…) How will Calacanis solve this problem remains to be seen.
What else do I have from submitting search page results apart from gaining money? In contrast to Technorati and Digg I do not get anything out of it except limited exposure – my name on a search page. With Technorati I get exposure for my blog (a link!) and receive useful data, for example who is linking to me and how many blogs link to me, what are top tags and so on. With Digg I can save my bookmarks and access them from anywhere and so on.
The strategy of Mahalo to index only the best sites as well is unclear.

The FAQ says: We will link to… sites that are considered authorities in their field (i.e. Edmunds for autos, Engadget for consumer electronics, and the New York Times for news). (mahalo.com/Mahalo_FAQ)

Who decides who is an authority? Which are the best sites? How is the decision made? What happens in case of different opinions? Free communities like the Wikipedia community developed (and develop) ways to solve problems and create transparent decision making processes. How about transparency at Mahalo?
Next: The question what is the user really looking for? ..This is a problem for all search engines: ambiguous searches. If I look for instance for the search result “Paris Hilton”. Do I look for the person or the place? Google tries to understand what users want by collecting more and more user specific information and personalizing search results according to this data. (I wrote about the privacy problem of hyper collecting user data of a commercial search engine company before. It is quasi automatically an “invitation” to collect more and more user data and utilize it commercially as much as possible.) There is no perfect solution to ambiguous searches. Mahalo also does not address the problem of ambiguous searches. So neither Mahalos results will be more relevant than those of other search engines, even if they are written by humans rather than by a computer algorithm.
Is Mahalo more transparent than others? Not as far as I can see. Mahalo increases transparency by showing top searches in real time at the right sidebar. Google Zeitgeist does not do that in real time. Technorati and others though do it also in real time. Therefore I do not see more transparency as other search engines offer it.
What about the search pages? I am not an expert in evaluating search engine results and it is probably still too early to do that anyways as Mahalo only started in June. Let’s see.
Is Mahalo for me? It is for me if it is free! To tackle the problem of search engine monopolization, I believe we need an approach to search that is free, open source, sustainable and provides good search results. On the website there is no information about what software Mahalo is using. When I asked Jason Calacanis – suprise! Mahalo is based on free software: MediaWiki, Squid, Nutch, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). How about the search result pages itself though? They are copyright to Mahalo and therefore are not free. “we feel since we're paying for the results we should own them”. On the Wikia Search project mailing list Jason explains further to Jimmy Wales:

Now, this is not written in stone. In the future we might move to a Creative Commons model for the results–perhaps non-commercial so someone doesn't just life the entire Mahalo index and dilute our ability to pay the contributors. That's my main concern: figuring out a way to keep paying folks who want to get paid for their contributions. So, I like CC Noncommerical and I like paying people. (Jason on the search-l-wikia mailing list on 4 July 2007)

Mahalo might in future use a license that is not as free as many in the free software/content/infrastructure etc. community would like it, but Jason Calacanis is obviously trying to develop a sustainable business model based on free layers. Additionally he has expressed strong interest in helping to build open source search software together with the Wikia Search project of Jimmy Wales:

Mahalo.com hopes to a) use Wikia's open source search software and b) wants to help build it. We *share* the mission to open up search. Jason on the search-l-wikia mailing list on 3 July 2007.

Mahalo is an interesting approach to search, which revives the idea of the Yahoo Directory, the DMOZ and other directory listings. It is based on free software, but not (yet) on free knowledge. I cannot copy the database, but I can duplicate the software that is powering the site. Mahalo is set up as a commercial enterprise. Users have the choice to work for them – to submit human written search result pages and get paid or to donate what they earn to the Wikimedia Foundation.
If Mahalo can become an alternative search engine with noticeable market share remains to be seen. If it is successful, I believe there is a high chance that it will be bought by Google, Yahoo or another company. It is probably what the investors are hoping for. If Mahalo would also use free licenses for its search page results, it would endanger this prospectus. Mahalo is trying to find a compromise between the use and the application of freedom in every layer (free software and free content) and its commercial interests. For anyone who wants free search it is a good start, but to create a really free search engine, result pages have to be free as well. Under current economic conditions this would not be interesting for a commercial enterprise. However, I believe only a completely free search based on completely free layers will provide a sustainable basis and motivation for people to form a free international community (like the Wikipedia community) that works continuously on a human powered search. But … a free community cannot be bought!

Selling Advertising Space – Priority Task of Search Engine Companies?

According to Theo Röhle of the University Hamburg (Germany) the commercial exploitation of advertising space has become the main task of search engine companies. In ‘Think of it first as an advertising system’: Personalisierte Online-Suche als Datenlieferaant des Marketings” (pdf) he analyses the elicitation of user data of search engines with a focus on personalized search.

Personalized online search as offered by Google and Yahoo can indeed help to improve search results and increase their relevance for the individual user.  But what makes these services interesting to search engine companies is the protocoling and interpretation of user behavior and the profiling of its users. Thus collected user data can be used for commercial interests, possibly without time limits.

As listed companies search engine firms are depending on investors and financial markets. Therefore it is indeed their strong interest to maximize profits. Google is a (close-to) monopoly in the search engine market. Investors need companies that grow steadily. It is hard for a company like Google to grow in the search engine market, which it controls in big parts. However Google can grow "in depth", meaning it can grow by collecting more information and utilizing it commercially.

Also Theo Röhle comes to the conclusion, that user data and information that was firstly ascertained to improve search engine results will be, because of the "commercial pressure to be exploited", utilized. This information is indeed the capital of search engine companies.

The question hence: Do I, as a user, want to participate in this process of capitalization of my personal data? And: What alternatives would there be?

In regards to the findings of Theo Rhöle search engines based on Free Software and Free Algorithms become a vital interest of every Internet user, who wants to protect his/her private data and continue using modern Internet services. Only Free search engines based on Free layers can avoid monopolistic structures, where one commercial party (nearly) controls the flow of information, public as well as private.

Open Business – Spreadshirt and Jamendo

Some time ago Andreas Milles of Spreadshirt had a presentation at the Berlin Webmonday about his companies Open Logo Contest. They had developed a community that worked on the development of their new logo. In the end they actually took the logo design of a free designer, who they only knew through his contributions on the website. They also granted the people most involved in the process some money and presents. Andreas saw this as a new way to do business and even went so far as to call it Open Marketing.
Another example of how concepts of free software development and business models can be transferred to other sectors shows the music site jamendo.com

“jamendo is a new model for artists to promote, publish, and be paid for their music. On jamendo, the artists distribute their music under Creative Commons licenses. In a nutshell, they allow you to download, remix and share their music freely. It's a "Some rights reserved" agreement, perfectly suited for the new century.”

So, check it out! They have some great music. Half of their advertising revenue goes to the artists and you also have the chance to donate to your favorite artists. I call that Fair Biz!

Freedom of Exchange of Data and Information in Open Wireless Networks

It is often stated that the Internet is the basis of the free communication and exchange of software and content – all kinds of information and knowledge. Yes, the Internet especially in the 1990’s could be regarded as a free infrastructure that enabled free exchange. This is changing rapidly throughout the world, as we see a trend to censoring of information all over the world and privately
enforced censoring with the help of copyright and patent laws.

The less free the Internet becomes the more attractive free
community networks will appear to the masses. It is the aim of open network enthusiasts to create truly free networks, which are
comparable to public spaces like a street where everyone can freely
walk and communicate with others. As in a city with its free public
spaces, we have a public space in the cyberspace. Public spaces
guarantee our basic rights like freedom of speech, freedom of
information and freedom of the press. However, also crimes happen in public spaces. There is no solution that will prevent crimes to a hundred percent without also reducing our freedoms, neither in the virtual world nor in the real world.

Still, neither people involved in free infrastructure projects regard their networks as a space free of the rule of law. The decentralized structures of these networks, however, (and for good reason) make it impossible to control the traffic centrally. The solution to reducing crime and fighting terrorism seems to be to require IPSs to control and protocol the traffic of all its users (entire populations e.g. in Germany). In fact the observing the traffic of all internet and network users in the world is rather questionable. Firstly concerning the duties of network operators, who should not and are in no position to take over police duties, secondly it is questionable in regards to the misuse that is possible with these huge amounts of data, that compromises of information like who communicates with whom, when, how long and possibly even what. Besides its drive of innovation and opportunities for free and open decentralized networks also propose a solution to trends of digital mass control in politics.

A world where everything is free

Imagine a world, where everything is free. Impossible? Right now
people all over the world are working on this idea. They want to create
a world where you can instantly have access to free content like free
music, videos or texts, free software like free operating systems,
programs, computer games and even powerful search engines, free
hardware like plans for computer chips and free infrastructure like
local wireless mesh networks.

1983 Richard Stallman launched the GNU Project, 1996 Linus Torvalds
started Linux, 1997 started Slashdot, 1999 Indymedia was started, in
2000 the first freifunk enthusiasts started experimenting in London and
Berlin, in January 2001 Wikipedia went online, in July 2001 the
P2P-Network BitTorrent was set up, the development of the free search
engine Nutch began 2002 and the P2P search engine Yacy was first tested
2004. These are examples of projects of people who started to create
free and open structures – of people who create free layers for
everyone to use.

How is this possible? Why do people do this? How can they afford to work like that?

The ideas behind setting up free layers are ground shaping. They
include a complete cultural and civilizational change of how we behave,
work, communicate and live together. The idea behind is a new social
contract where you give freely and receive freely. These people simply
have fun by doing what they are doing and additionally their motivation
is to do good like for example to educate and help others.

The surprise is that this system is working as a real economic
system – a sharing economy, where everyone wins. What you get is always
more than what you give. This is especially true in the free software
community, where a person puts his work into a software program and in
exchange gets back the work of sometimes hundreds of programmers, who
worked on other parts of the software. This example was famously made
by Rishab Ayer Ghosh: You give one hour and you get back the work of
hundreds or thousands of hours of programmers around the world. It is a
point where you always get back more than you give – a real
win-win-situation.

Of course this example cannot be transferred exactly to the “world
of things”. When you have one apple and you share it with someone, you
will only have half an apple. However in a world where technology is
the driving force of the economy, the knowledge of how to produce
something becomes often much more valuable than the availability of
natural resources which can be delivered easily anywhere in today’s
world.

And in fact what we can observe is that besides the production of
free software (e.g. Linux) and free content (e.g. Wikipedia) people
begin to exchange knowledge of how to actually make and manipulate
things like computer chips or wireless routers as well – driven by the
ideas of free sharing and its personal profits or because they simply
want to gain experience, get feedback or to have fun.

Reinhard Schlagintweit über seine Liebe zu Afghanistan, Fehler gegenüber den Taliban und den Einsatz deutscher Soldaten

Saghar Chopan im Gespräch mit Reinhard Schlagintweit. Bereits 1958 war er in Kabul an der Botschaft tätig: Ein Interview über sein Leben als Botschaftsangestellter und seine Reise als Vorsitzender von UNICEF nach Afghanistan kurz nach der Eroberung durch die Taliban. Weitere Themen sind die Sicherheitslage im Land und mögliche Fehler der Vergangenheit gegenüber dem Talibanregime. Zum Einsatz von deutschen Soldaten insbesondere im Süden hat Schlagintweit eine gespaltene Meinung: „… auf der einen Seite … dürfen wir nicht sagen für diese schwierigen Aufgaben sind wir uns zu gut. Auf der anderen Seite an einer Aktion mitzuwirken, wo wir nicht die politischen Bedingungen selbst … gestalten können … ist zuviel verlangt.

Während der Zeit als Botschaftsmitarbeiter wohnte Herr Schlagintweit mit seiner Familie in Kabul. Sein jüngster Sohn kam hier zur Welt. „Seitdem bin ich in das Land verliebt – die ganze Familie. Das war mit die schönste Zeit, die interessanteste Zeit in unserem Leben. Wir haben uns unheimlich wohl gefühlt. Das Land ist wunderbar. Die Menschen sind sehr freundlich und offen. … Und seitdem bin ich an dem Land interessiert geblieben. Ich habe versucht zu verfolgen wie es sich entwickelt hat. Die tragische Geschichte des Landes, die jüngsten Ereignisse…“

Folgend erhalten wir Einblicke in die Erlebnisse eines Zeitzeugen, der Afghanistan aus einer romantischen Leidenschaft heraus in den 1950er und 60er Jahren erlebte und lieben lernte. Damals konnte man sich im Land frei bewegen und fühlte sich durch zahlreiche persönliche Kontakte mit dem Direktor der deutschen Schule in Afghanistan oder Angestellten zu Hause und in der Botschaft sehr wohl. „Das war fast ideal. Man wusste natürlich, dass das Land sehr arm war, dass sehr vieles fehlte, aber irgendwie hat die Armut damals eine andere Rolle gespielt, wie heute. Man war der Armut nicht so nah oder es war so sehr Teil der Tradition, dass man sich nicht soviel Gedanken gemacht hat, wie man das heute tut. Und es waren natürlich auch nicht die furchtbaren Zerstörungen des Krieges und die Zerstörungen der Strukturen, die heute so schlimm sind.“

Auch die Einstellungen zum Tod erschienen den Schlagintweits anders als zu Hause. „Wenn ein Kind gestorben ist, dann waren die Eltern sehr traurig, aber sie haben gesagt, Gott hat es gegeben, Gott hat es genommen.“

Der letzte Besuch nach Afghanistan führte Herrn Schlagintweit 1996 mit Unicef nach Kabul. „Das war zufällig gerade, wie die Taliban Kabul einverleibt hatten. Das war … traurig … wie nach einem Bombenangriff. Das war furchtbar… aber der Zauber der Menschen war vorhanden.“

Auch „… die Frage der Sicherheit ist immer eine schwere Frage in Afghanistan gewesen. … Ich war im Jahr 2000 der Meinung, dass wenn wir eine positive Haltung zu den Taliban eingenommen hätten und sie anerkannt hätten und auch ihren Stolz damit anerkannt hätten und dann langsam mit ihnen gehandelt hätten und sie beeinflusst hätten, dann wäre das Land nicht da, wo es jetzt ist. Jetzt ist es ein bisschen überhitzt meiner Meinung nach, auch die westliche Präsenz… aber bestimmt wäre das Land weiter als es damals gewesen ist. Heutzutage kann ich keinen Rat geben. Ich glaube, dass jeder versucht das Beste zu tun, aber dass man vielleicht auch … die Kapazitäten von Afghanistan … überschätzt werden. … In der Zentralmacht fehlt das notwendige Personal um die Hilfe auch sinnvoll umzusetzen. Ich glaube einfach man muss Geduld haben. Man kann einen Staat, der so kaputt ist durch die Bürgerkriege nicht innerhalb von ein paar Jahren aufbauen. … Ich glaube ein gutes Schulsystem ist das A und O, das Allerwichtigste.“

Abschließend befragt Saghar Chopan Herrn Schlagintweit zum Einsatz der Deutschen im Süden Afghanistans: Sollen die Deutschen dahin gehen und aktiv mitkämpfen an der Seite der Amerikaner? Schlagintweit: „…Ich muss ganz ehrlich sagen, dass ich kein ganz genaues Bild habe, was im Süden los ist, wer gegen wen kämpft. … Und ich bin gespalten. Ich finde auf der einen Seite, wenn wir Mitglied der Nato sind, dann dürfen wir nicht sagen für diese schwierigen Aufgaben sind wir uns zu gut. Auf der anderen Seite an einer Aktion mitzuwirken, wo wir nicht die politischen Bedingungen mit selbst gesetzt haben und gestalten können und damit auch Risiken auf uns zu nehmen, ist zuviel verlangt.

Saghar Chopan: Herzlichen Dank.

Ajmal Naqshbandi ermordet

Ich hatte es gerade in den Nachrichten gehört, als Björn (www.inyas-blog.eu) es mir ebenfalls mitteilte.

Der letzten Monat zusammen mit dem italienischen Reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo entführte Journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi wurde von den Taliban umgebracht. Am Montag Abend fand eine Gedenkveranstaltung bei NAI (nai.org.af) statt.

BBC: The Taleban say they have killed an Afghan reporter abducted last month with an Italian journalist.
news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/6537097.stm

Meine Unterkunft in Kabul

Auf dem Weg vom Flughafen in die Stadt gibt es viele bewaffnete Kräfte. Es sind etwa 15 Grad und es ist trocken. Der berüchtigte Kabuler Staub wirbelt bereits kräftig durch die Straßen. Vor dem Goethe-Institut passieren wir drei Sicherheitsbarrieren. Hier im Institut werde ich auch wohnen.

Es ist ein zweistöckiges Gebäude. Früher war es einmal die Botschaft der DDR. Gegenüber ist das Außenministerium und die chinesische Botschaft (ganz so wie in Berlin, wo ich auch gegenüber der chinesischen Botschaft gewohnt habe). Hinter dem Institut ist der Geheimdienst (die mit den abgedunkelten Vans ohne Nummernschilder) und ein Stück weiter die Kabuler Residenz von dem Warlord Dostum. Dort finden ab und zu Parties statt, die vor allem im Sommer verhindern sollen, dass man zu früh einschläft.
 
Ich habe ein Zimmer mit Bett, Schrank, Regal und Schreibtisch und sogar einen Fernseher mit Satellitenempfang. Im Bad findet man Waschbecken, Toilette und Dusche. Ist ein bisschen heruntergekommen, aber im Großen und Ganzen ok. Eine Küche mit Kühlschrank und Elektroherd gibt es im Erdgeschoss – wird zwar immer sauber gemacht, aber eine Grundreinigung wäre trotzdem einmal angebracht. Bei dem Staub in Kabul ist es aber generell schwierig Sachen sauber zu halten.
 
Im Hinblick auf Elektrizität und warm Wasser bin ich einmalig privilegiert. Das Goethe-Institut und die angrenzende Visa-Abteilung der Botschaft haben einen speziellen Vertrag mit der Regierung und werden rund um die Uhr mit Strom versorgt. Wenn der Strom doch einmal ausfällt, springt der riesige Generator vor dem Gebäude an.
 
Ich wohne in einem der sichersten Stadtteile Kabuls. In der Umgebung sind viele Regierungsgebäude, die ständig bewacht werden. Sowieso befindet sich hier vor fast jedem Gebäude ein Guard. Das Goethe-Institut ist stark gesichert. Personen werden zweimal kontrolliert bevor sie hier reinkommen. Es erscheint mir alles ein bisschen übertrieben, aber die Afghanen finden das  selbst gar nicht so schlimm, sagen sie jedenfalls.