Oliver Moran wrote: > Taran and Ed, > > My issue is not that the video is commerical or fanciful. Rather, in > the context of the 'digital divide', my point is that videos like this > represent an unrealistic vision of the value of ICT for social > change. Visions are essential to the future and there is nothing > inherently wrong with unrealistic visions, however, so many visions of > ICT represent fanciful drawings of economic and social relations that > the boundry between our ability to imagine what practical roles ICT > can play in societal change and what are fanciful and unrealistic > notions is unknown - where dream ends and ambition begins is collapsed > and unknowable under a deluge of fancy. This is what is dangerous > about videos like this and what makes practical and useful > applications of ICT for change - whatever change - more difficult. > That one video is fanciful is no great issue, but en masse only the > fanciful is encouraged.
Forgive me, but I must regretfully tell you that many past 'unrealistic visions' are realities. And I'll also add that it's very likely that there will always be a Digital Divide, simply because some people end up with more and some people end up with less. Decreasing the Digital Divide, though, is certainly possible. I don't see what was portrayed in the advertisement as unrealistic - I see it as what could be with the *present* technology and yet is not available because of all sorts of things. That gets us into a WSIS discussion, perhaps even a focal WGIG discussion. But all these acronyms serve as different blind stabs at a solution that many of us see, but cannot enact in a world rooted so deeply in traditions of geopolitical economics. An advertisement that portrays a cutting through those traditions to the very core - THAT is worthwhile. An interesting sidenote that is somewhat interesting to consider: When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, the Japanese did not know. They heard rumours which were unconfirmed. They found out from the announcement of the United States... how perfectly odd. Imagine someone in another country telling you that part of your country, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist... > What telephone company would allow Ghandi, a critic of modernity and > industrialism - Taran, I really don't know if he would keep a blog! Neither do I. But he never had the option... > - speak genuinly about global imbalances in perception of power and > knowlege through practices of technological hegemony, as Ghandi > 'speaks' about in this advertisment? But then the message of the iis > not to question global imbalances, it is to encourage it, however you > interpret it - as a commercial, as a vision of ICT, as a vision of the > 'digital divide', as a vision for change, as a vision of the future. Well, let's take the advertisement in context. This Italian company was communicating a vision. I was challenged in finding the differences between that vision and the vision of the people who are involved in trying to decrease the Digital Divide. What I found was most powerful about the ad was that a message from one of the great people in history reached across the globe. I suppose after dealing electronically with the late tsunami disaster, that hits a really powerful note within me. I do not claim objectivity here; I claim humanity in an unashamed and unabashed manner. Objectivity in all it's splendour can be true torture; it's a shame that regardless of how hard we try, we are never 100% objective. Any one thing can be described any number of ways - this is why bookstores are littered with novels with the same plots with the character's names changed to protect our psyche from realizing that we have read it before. And yet, of all these stories, certain tellings stand out - not because they are objective! They stand out and are read because they are *interesting*. And that is what attends the masses, not the 'rational objective' perspectives obtained from a limited and exclusive group of people. Our society is based on oral tradition; written tradition came along and then video; now we have electronic tradition. I wonder if in 50 years someone will find my USB key and be able to use it. > Presenting every new thing as a sapling that only needs encouragement > to blosom and sprout change for the better - as Taran did in his > alegorical reply to my post on that matter - is to treat all things > equally and thus anihilate the portential of everything. The way we > imagine technology needs to be grounded in realistic, > socially-grounded terms and we imagine realistic, socially-grounded > needs, less as technological deficits on the part of those who are > exploited and impoverished. Advertisments such as these do not help > matters and they abound. Actually, I think you missed the point of the alegorical reply. Some things fail, some things do not fail - how that annihalates the potential of everything escapes me, as I am certain that the point I was making was that everything has potential and that dismissing that potential simply because something is new is not only annihalating the potential of the object of discussion - it's a annihalation of the potential of the original structure, and is therefore self defeating. How you mixed the two subjects of the advertisement and the Wikis is quite interesting, and again I wonder what part of the conversation I am missing. There was never a line drawn between the two aside from the fact that I responded to both threads, as did you. Public awareness helps matters, by the way. And advertising is a vector for public awareness; but do not believe me. Leave your office, hop a public transportation bus if you can and go tour the other side of the digital divide - the ghetto of the city, or the rural area. Ask them about 'Digital Divide', and they will probably give you a blank look - but show them an advertisement such as the one featuring Gandhi, or show them to an internet connection and allow them to affect their own world through technology in tangible ways... people may say 'I want to do that'. Like it or not, private business is needed to bridge the digital divide. I sincerely doubt any computer being used on this list was designed by, built or programmed by a government or NGO. There is a link; defining the link is fine but denying the link is socially irresponsible. -- Taran Rampersad [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxgazette.com http://www.a42.com http://www.worldchanging.com http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net "Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
