About

This site is the web home of Rean van der Merwe. I use it as platform to think through and share ideas on the part of the web that is bottom up, emergent, and still in some way reflects the ideals of the homesteaders of the early web. Some of the links and writing relate to my PhD research with the Open University.

I have worked in South Africa, Madagascar, Namibia, Zanzibar, the United Kingdom and France as web developer, technical and communications consultant, and interactive project manager. The clients have ranged from local NGOs, to development agencies, national government and multinationals such as IBM and the internet bank EGG. I am none the less old-fashionedly passionate about the potential of the web to bridge all kinds of local information divide and to transform the ways in which we share information. As living proof, I do much of my work from a base on the far southern Cape Peninsula of South Africa, where guinea fowl, baboons and porcupine make up a healthy compliment of my neighbours.