[DDN] A point of concern for the FOSS Community
Government of Punjab Pakistan and Microsoft Promoting IT Skills in Pakistan Reference: E skills 360 degrees for 21st Century Employability Skills a Dream for the Province of Punjab Lahore, January 27th 2006 http://www.unitar.org/icwfd/info/lahore.htm Microsoft to invest $10m in Punjab The News, March 17th, 2005 http://www.pitb.gov.pk/PressReleases/Microsoft_1April_2005.asp E skills 360 degrees for 21st Century Employability Skills a Dream for the Province of Punjab http://icwfd.org/n15.html Can Pakistan afford this reckless spending amidst of massive earthquake destruction, its commitment towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals and poverty alleviation through ICTs? At the same time the Government has created an Open Source Resource Centre spending millions on the promotion of Free and Open Source Software (for e.g. 60 Million on just one project) Through This aristocratic project costing millions of dollars/billions of rupees by Government of the Punjab is working to promote proprietary software organizations like Microsoft in collaboration with UNITAR-United Nations Institute for Training and Research that is surprisingly against the agenda of United Nations promoting FOSS in developing countries for reducing digital divide and alleviating poverty and achieving the MDGs. In partnership with the Government of the Punjab are the International Commission on Workforce Development. Food for Thought: -From where will all this money come and who will pay the loans back, our future generations? -Through the promotion of Proprietary Software, aren't we putting the people of Punjab in the Software Piracy Trap? The amount sums up to 1 Million People! -Would all these people be able to purchase proprietary software licenses to implement their skills developed through this programme? -Should we believe this is the right way to overcome the digital divide? A question mark for the FOSS Community Activists, IOSN, FSF, OSI, Open Source Resource Centre, others advocating the use of FOSS and those who attend conferences and consultations from Pakistan presenting large figures of trainings and various programmes at Asia OSS, FOSSAP, WSIS etc! Regards --- Fouad Riaz Bajwa General Secretary - FOSS Advocate FOSSFP: Free Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan R Secretariat FOSS Resource Centre - FOSSRC 5-A, 1st Floor, 32-M, Manzoor Plaza Civic Centre, Model Town Extension Lahore-54700, Pakistan Cell: 92-333-4661290 Tel: 92-42-8496645 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: www.fossfp.org ; www.ubuntu-pk.org Disclaimer: This e-mail message is intended for its recipient only. If you have received this e-mail in error, please discard it. The author of this e- mail or FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan (R) takes no responsibility for the material, implicit or explicit. ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org 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.
Re: [DDN] Join Lessig, Cooper, Chester and Scott in a Discussion of Net Freedom
Hi Tim, Can't manage the call due to faculty training. Will anyone be recording this session? Thanks, Alice Bedard-Voorhees -Original Message- From: Timothy Karr [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Feb 9, 2006 12:17 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [DDN] Join Lessig, Cooper,Chester and Scott in a Discussion of Net Freedom Greetings DDN crew, I'm writing to invite you to join bloggers from across the country for a phone conference on the future of the Internet. Featured speakers will include Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, Mark Cooper of Consumer Federation of America, Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy and Ben Scott of Free Press. WHEN: Friday, Feb. 10 -- 12:30 p.m. EST / 9:30 a.m. PST CALL: 1-800-370-0906 CODE: 7028789 Until now, the Internet has been governed by the principle of network neutrality http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom , which allows independent voices to try out new ideas without having to pay extra or ask for permission. But net neutrality is in danger. Major communications companies are planning to discriminate against the online content and services that they don't yet control. If successful, their scheme would forever alter the free flow of information and ideas in the blogosphere. Congress is now debating the future of the Internet. Unless bloggers and their readers get involved, our elected representatives could allow the Internet to become a walled garden and shift the digital revolution into reverse Lessig, Cooper, Chester and Scott will give brief presentations on the threat to the Internet and then take comments and questions from you and other bloggers. For more information, please visit www.NetFreedomNow.org or www.freepress.net/netfreedom http://wwwfreepress.net/netfreedom I hope you'll join in the conversation on Friday. Sincerely, Timothy Karr Campaign Director Free Press www.freepress.net P.S. Here's some more information about the speakers: Lawrence Lessig is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. Professor Lessig represented Web site operator Eric Eldred in the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, and chairs the Creative Commons project (www.creativecommons.org). He has won numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation's Freedom Award, and was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries for arguing against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online. Professor Lessig is the author of Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001) and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999). Mark Cooper is director of research at the Consumer Federation of America (www.consumerfed.org/) where he has responsibility for analysis and advocacy in the areas of telecommunications, media, digital rights, economic and energy policy. He has provided expert testimony in over 250 cases for public interest clients including Attorneys General, People's Counsels, and citizen interveners before state and federal agencies, courts and legislators in almost four dozen jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada. He is the author of Media Ownership and Democracy in the Digital Information Age (Center for Internet Society, Stanford University, 2003), Cable Mergers and Monopolies (Electronic download) (Economic Policy institute, 2002, paper) and Equity and Energy (Westview, 1983). Jeff Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy (www.democraticmedia.org), a nonprofit organization devoted to ensuring that the digital media serve the public interest. A former journalist and filmmaker, his work has appeared in many publications on radio and on TV. He has played a leading role in debates about media policy in numerous forms for upward of two decades and was named by Newsweek as one of the Internet's 50 most influential people. His article on The End of the Internet? was recently published by The Nation. Ben Scott is policy director of Free Press (www.freepress.net). He heads up the Washington, D.C. office, dedicated to monitoring and analyzing media policymaking to increase public awareness and participation. Before joining Free Press, he worked as a legislative fellow handling telecommunications policy for Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is also in the final stages of his doctoral degree in communications from the University of Illinois. He is the co-editor of two books, Our Unfree Press (New Press, 2004) and The Future of Media (Seven Stories, 2005). _ = = = = = Timothy Karr Campaign Director Free Press http://www.freepress.net/ www.freepress.net 1.201.533.8838 Join a daily discussion on the state of our digital union at MediaCitizen: http://mediacitizen.blogspot.com/ http://mediacitizen.blogspot.com/ ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list
RE: [DDN] Will a Medical Digital Divide Hasten the Extinction of the Neighborhood Medical Practice?
If you want to learn more about the federal push for electronic health records, see http://www.os.dhhs.gov/healthinformationtechnology/ Theres a link to federal efforts. The usual groups who are part of the digital divide face this issue - clinics that serve low income patients and rural clinics, as well as the small offices that Andy mentioned. The Indian Health Service has come up with a model program http://www.ihs.gov/CIO/EHR/ I don't know anything about this program, except that it exists. Thanks for bringing up this topic Andy. siobhan Siobhan Champ-Blackwell, MSLIS Community Outreach Liaison National Network of Libraries of Medicine, MidContinental Region Creighton University Health Sciences Library 2500 California Plaza Omaha, NE 68178 800-338-7657 in CO,KS,MO,NE,UT,WY 402-280-4156 outside the region [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://nnlm.gov/mcr/ (NN/LM MCR Web Site) http://medstat.med.utah.edu/blogs/BHIC/ (Web Log) http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/siobhanchamp-blackwell (Digital Divide Network Profile) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Carvin Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 8:46 AM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: [DDN] Will a Medical Digital Divide Hasten the Extinction of the Neighborhood Medical Practice? Hi everyone, I've just written a blog entry about a piece from today's Boston Globe describing the challenges faced by doctors incorporating electronic recordkeeping for patients' files. E-records help doctors provide better care, but the the systems used to track the records can cost tens of thousands of dollars, making it harder for small, neighborhood medical practices to compete against monolithic medical networks. More here: http://www.andycarvin.com permalink: http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2006/02/will_a_medical_digit.html -- -- Andy Carvin acarvin (at) edc . org andycarvin (at) yahoo . com http://www.digitaldivide.net http://www.andycarvin.com -- ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org 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. ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org 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.
Re: [DDN] [Multilingualism in Cyberspace] Perhaps more complex than that
Hi all, Long post...I wrote this a few days ago, but didn't post it, and then I added some more to it, so it's grown very long. Apologies in advance...and hopefully my tagging it with a second subject tag will keep the uninterested from becoming trapped in my verbosity. I'll point out in advance that my first language is Bengali, not English (though I am most fluent in English now) and that I grew up in India. And I'm not exactly a digital native...I came in to the digital world as a result of my own personal interest and education, after finishing high school. From this perspective, it's easy to say that yes, Bengali speakers should have website content in Bangla, Chinese speakers in Mandarin, and so on. And I agree that, theoretically, it is a good thing to have online content in multiple languages. However, the process of making this happen is bound by purely economic factors, and so it's much more complex than simple US-led dominance of English or insensitivity to the needs of the third world. The fact is, if you actually grab a few Bangladeshi / Indian / Pakistani villagers and ask them if they would rather learn to use a computer purely in Bangla / Hindi / Urdu / insert-language-and-dialect here or learn to speak and read English, they will almost unanimously choose English. This is why there are thousands of programs in India teaching English for every one program trying to teach the poor to use a computer. English is a mark of education, it makes jobs available, it allows a standard of literacy, it allows further education...all of these things apply to computer education, but to a lesser degree. Especially in terms of people's perceptions of English literacy vs. computer literacy. English being the defacto language of the internet is not a status quo concept, but more akin to a movement that has momentum. The more English is used on the internet, the more incentive there is to use it. It's not a static thing that we can begin to shift because we have a more solid idealogical underpinning. It's a dynamic system that is heading more and more into English-dominated waters, with increasing momentum. Since I spoke earlier of economic factors, I'll state the economics of this here: What value is there to teaching subject X to use a computer in the vernacular, and what value is there teaching him to use that computer in English? In terms of value to the subject: English is the language of the internet, the language of the times, the language of jobs and prosperity, the language of emigration, the language of progress. Using a computer in English is infinitely more valuable than using a computer in the vernacular, precisely because it is mostly used thus...and this demand drives the constant generation of content in English. Value to me, as the teacher: Digital education in English is more difficult than in the vernacular, because I have to teach ESL as well as digital literacy, or build one program on top of the other. However, my motives as a nonprofiteer have to be tailored more to maximizing value to the user, not to myself, and so I might still choose to develop programs in digital literacy in English, because I believe they will present more value to him. Also, it's easier to get funding if I'm doing ESL + computer literacy, instead of trying to develop users of the non-English internet. Value to the economy: Businesses are marked by purely economically motives. Is it better for a business to train workers to use the internet in English or in the vernacular? Is it better for them to create positions requiring vernacular computer use (which few will ever qualify for) or in English (which many will qualify for)? Assume that enough interest was generated, somehow, to enable the production of computer hardware in Bangla (as it already exists in Korean and Japanese, to name two other examples). Would a business buy this hardware, even if they preferred Bangla as a language for their day to day activities, knowing that their staff would have to be retrained and that getting tech support would be difficult, if not impossible? As a techie, I can tell you that I would have a hard time troubleshooting a computer in Bangla, even though it's my native language. I've done tech support for machines in Japanese and Korean in the past, and it's a real pain. Since it takes me longer and I have to work harder, I charge more. Real life example: My martial arts instructor has a computer with Windows in Korean, here in Chicago. I troubleshoot his computers and network once in a while for free, in exchange for free martial arts classes. Since I usually can't fix problems with his Korean computer, and neither can his other students, it costs him a significant amount of money to use that machine...while it costs him much less to use his other computers in English. Even though he prefers the Korean machine, he is drifting slowly but surely
