I like the technology imagery folded into literature. Right on my brother!!
Just to add that the technology "have's" & "have not's" equate to being as well the economic/financial/societal "have's" & "have not's". The wider & deeper the digital divide the more pressure/tension is built up between the "haves" and "have not's" and the quicker the clock ticks in the time bomb it assembles itself.
Given this reality the authorities [political/economic/societal] need to remember that "For whom the bell tolls? It tolls for thee"
The appropriate proverb I think is " A word to the wise [ought to be] is sufficient"
Errol
At 23:18 27/02/2005 -0600, you wrote:
I've held off on this.
*** Taran jumps in, sticking a 'Kick Me' sign on his back and arming himself with a sharp, pointy keyboard***
Some people read and write papers related to the Digital Divide. Riveting work in academese, and it's what other people in academia like - but it's not anything that really has an immediate effect.
Then there are people who find a 'popular' problem, and deal with it. They become accidental stars because they are related to a particular issue that gains prominence.
Then there are the people who live around everyday problems, and are aware of what is really happening within their own sphere of influence - and sphere of being influenced.
Then there are the people who aren't on the list, don't know what a Digital Divide list, and so on.
So I don't get a report that can claim that the Digital Divide is decreasing in any satisfactory way. Not only is the Digital Divide greater than one region or demographic, the Digital Divide is a abyss between to disparate groups of people - the technology 'haves' and 'have-nots'. And on either side of this divide, there are people who constantly feed the divide through either poorly funded or well funded ignorance.
Then we have the people who fund things by requiring conformity to a system which segregates rather than finding common ground - and doing this on many different levels, through control of infrastructure through a technology-inspired legal system to simply dividing people by race, geography, culture, gender and things as arbitrary as the Bell Curve.
"...Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right - here I am, stuck in the middle with you..." (Steve Miller Band)
In a world where Moore's 'Law' is yet to be disproved - where the complexity of circuits increases by 100% every 18 months or so (I forget) - and an administrative system for dealing with the issues which requires at least 3 months to get a paper done - someone has the gall to tell me that there Digital Divide is narrowing fast because they've probably blundered into a ford of the Digital Divide, standing in the center of the river of water we define as the Digital Divide... possibly on a temporary sandbar built on the eddies and currents of seasonal rains in a distant land...
Meanwhile, people who are technology 'haves' are only now beginning to explore technology that is at least an evolution of Moore's 'Law' behind. Even those like myself, who live in relative time - where a second with a pretty technology can be a second, but a second with a calculator seems like an hour...
No. The Digital Divide is increasing, and it's happening even within the groups that discuss the Digital Divide. The WSIS seems to have found the least credible technology users from around the world, given them credibility through a soup of acronyms and a list of titles while providing funding for more acronyms, more titles. Verily, I believe that some of the people most in need of having a bridge across the Digital Divide are the very people at WSIS. This does not include all of them, by any stretch, but when the WGIG is made up the way it was and defined only after the nominees were selected... oh, there's a story to tell there. A sad story reflecting not only the organizational limitations of the WSIS, but the very limitations which reinforce the Digital Divide.
And it's a mistake that the very people who are representing the poorer countries own nice cars, dress nicely and don't look twice at the slums in their own countries. It *must* be a coincidence. It could not have been planned. But when people sip cocktails together in Geneva, they don't talk to the people with blue collars - or the ones who can't even afford a collar. They reinforce themselves, their opinions...
And they look around, and they talk about what they see - this is only natural. But they do not see the problems that are out of their perspective.
I say unleash the general public on the web through content management systems and weblogs. It's the only way to challenge a system based on broadcasting instead of interaction. It's the only way actual discussion can take place. It cannot occur with people issuing unsubstantiated - and completely non-intuitive - press releases. It cannot occur without PEOPLE, and this is what the present system would have us think.
-- Taran Rampersad
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.linuxgazette.com http://www.a42.com http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net
"Criticize by creating." � Michelangelo
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