Yacine raises a good point, and it relates to both semantics and actions. Terms and expressions such as "bridging the digital divide" and "sustainability" stand for concepts and approaches to development that mean (meant) something, but their formulaic repetition tends to blur them into meaninglessness.
With regard to the "bridging the digital divide" discussions, I've long thought that what is really being proposed and ultimately accomplished is replicating the global "divide" on smaller (national and ever more local) levels. Indeed, this will at least in the short term coincide largely with the lines of social and economic divides of long standing. To a certain extent this may be unavoidable, and one certainly should not minimize the challenges facing or efforts made by people and projects working in this area. But it is important as Yacine suggests and we probably all would agree, to try to be aware of the impacts of ICT for development projects on existing inequalities, and above all to have a longer term vision. Don Osborn [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Bisharat! A language, technology & development initiative *Bisharat! Initiative langues - technologie - developpement http://www.bisharat.net ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
