Fw: <nettime> Closing the information technology gap

[Michael Gurstein <mgurst@techbc.ca>]

The document below is very revealing in the context of our "dotforce"
discussions.

For those on the US side of the Atlantic, a fairly close reading will give some
idea of the quite different mindset which the Europeans (the Eurocrats at
least) bring to issues of IT/ICT... Implicit in the document is the sense of a
need to "catch up", of the capacity of Governments to intervene in technology
and technology deployment issues, the notion of "top down" direction to these
developments and the notion that technology (as with other)
rights/opportunities are something which are "granted" rather than available to
be taken/used at will.

The term "dirigiste" springs to mind which of course, is everything which the
folks in Americaland resist/despise/reject as being precisely the difference
between their culture/economy/polity and its success and everyone else's
culture. And of course, this is the culture etc. out of which the technology
bounty has arisen.  Much of the rest of the world including large numbers of
business folk in Europe as elsewhere are now much intrigued with this---what
Barbrook et al have called the "California Ideology".

The technology has now grown up a bit (and gotten very very rich), and now the
"adults" (I love that term, which is being used in the context of the US
election to refer to the good grey folks in the background who really make the
decisions and set the limits on the playpens in which the mere candidates are
allowed to play) are starting to take an interest.  So now the clash of world
views as between Eurocrats and California Cowboys (CCs), between oil folks who
like stable markets and stable economies and techie folks who couldn't care
less, between Foreign Ministers and Chefs de Cabinet and their younger
confreres jumping up and down about WAP and Napster and Linux will begin to
emerge.  Anyone watching what is happening at the moment between the "Big
Board" i.e. the NYSE and the Tech Exchange i.e. the NSDAQ...

And one of the places where all of this is going to be played out is in venues
like "G8-DotForce Initiative" where the old economy/polity meets the new at a
level where the old economy is very very comfortable and the New Economy quite
frankly doesn't have a clue.

>From the perspective of "Civil Society" though, these tussles between the old
folks and the new kids are really beside the point... The Eurocrats certainly
have no idea how to make the new technologies useful on the ground/in the
communities (otg/itc) for things like improving living conditions, extending
literacy, supporting formal and informal health care, etc.etc.  The CCs don't
really care very much about this, its only new markets and maybe some new
converts to "entrepreneurship" as an ideology.

In fact it is "Civil Society" who are the folks who are working otg/itc who can
actually make the technology work in the ways it could work to improve living
standards and bridge the multiple divides--digital and other.

Which is why it is so important that the Civil Society chairs in these forums
are not occupied by individuals (appointed by the old folks) but rather are
links between these forums (and funding/resource opportunities) and otg/itc
real life experience and  capacity to make these things work in useful ways.

There are real opportunities for using the technologies to improve living
conditions, extend education, raise the standards of rural health care, help
sustain local cultures.  It is the responsibility/opportunity for Civil Society
in contexts such as the DotForce and the World Bank's portal effort to ensure
that these become something more than simply another way for Governments to
"provide" information or to extend the reach of electronic consumerism into
ever more distant and remote regions.

Civil Society in these contexts must insist on building and using local
capacity, on communities creating community content, on using community
networks as delivery systems, on identifying and propagating community best
practices.  And overall, it must ensure that whatever grand programs result
that they are designed so that resources flow in useable ways to communities,
that local technical capacity is built and not supplanted, that ownership of
community information rests with communities, that local languages are
protected, that local commerce is enhanced.

Overall Civil Society has the opportunity and the responsibility to ensure that
communities are respected in the process of technology deployment and that the
opportunity to use the technology to enable communities to achieve their
objectives and to participate more effectively in the decisions which affect
their daily lives is realized.

(Anyone wishing to join the discussion around the DotForce and other
initiatives for Civil Society can review the archives and subscribe at
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/lists/dotforce

Mike Gurstein

See also M. Gurstein (ed.) Community Informatics:  Enabling Communities with
Information and Communications Technologies, Idea Group, 2000
http://www.idea-group.com/books.html (ask for the 50% discount)

----- Original Message -----
From: John Horvath <jhorv@helka.iif.hu>
To: <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Sent: Friday, November 24, 2000 12:51 PM
Subject: <nettime> Closing the information technology gap


> [The following is from a EC document which deals with the French EU
> presidency and their attempts at implementing the "information society."
> Ironically, no mention is made of minitel which, although crude by
> present standards (unless you compare it to the back-to-the-future-
> technology called WAP), at least deserves at least a word or two.
>
> -J]
>
>
>
> From: Euroabstracts, Volume 38, Number 4, European Commission, 2000.
> Pp 12-3.
>
>
>
> Closing the information technology gap
>
> The new information and communications technologIes (ICTs) are the
> driving force behind the "new economy" upon which many hopes are placed,
> particularly in terms of competitiveness and employment. They also pose

< ... >

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