I could not agree more with Dave. However he challenge lies in living with the fact that education and literacy levels are issues , and given that how does one solve the digital divide probems. Are the best solutions video conferencing led ? (this does work much better when literacy levels are poor) , Shuld e-mail queries be replaced by Video mail queries ? But on an overall level, if there is a solution to a problem that a rural person has (be it a farmer, a housewife or a youth) then making that solution available and using the internet to optimise the delivery of the solution is what would work. The internet can empower local channels by giving them access to better expertise (be it a local teacher accessing better quality content and using that to teach children, or a local para-medic /nurse accessing a doctor on video conferencing from a village to a town ) Many of these are working in small pockets , and the key is to scale them
Rgds P G Ponnapa -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of roop dave Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 8:50 PM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: Re: [DDN] [Multilingualism in Cyberspace] Perhaps more complex thanthat Hi every one ... In my view "Language" and "Digital Divde" are two separate things. Follwoing are my observations in thie regard Needless to say that ICTs in the developing countries have contributed in increasing divide or gap between rural and urban. Increased tele density in Indian urban area from that of about 5 % before year 2000 to that of 18-23 in the year 2005, with rural tele density still hovering about 1 % proves that - disadvantaged rural population got further ignored in the current ICT enabling process. Every one knows that hundreds of call centers are catering to majority of developed countries helping their air transportation, banking, IT industries, health sectors - 24/7! But none of the call center is either doing or is capable of helping next-door neighbors in rural areas in the same country! Reasons are many and the debate can be endless -but in my view - Characteristically -All innovations and new (technology) inceptions reaches to limited segments - offering advantages to certain groups and disadvantages to others, specifically in the first or initial phase; Poor tele com infrastructures in rural area are the biggest hindrance in percolation of ICT enabled services there; Internet would, perhaps, will be used as an access mechanism, initially, to access specific websites designed and populated for delivering custom design services by the local government for rural and urban citizens. All these applications will be in vernacular language (many of them are available today also). India Rural citizens have a very low propensity to consume and their requirements are very limited and restricted due to various reasons (education, poverty, castes etc..). Health, education and revenue matters (land transfer etc ) are few of critical service demands in Indian rural areas and non-other then local governments can satisfy these. Plethora of information on internet has no meaning for these rural people. Rural area needs services in their own language and good ICT infrastructures along with local governments commitment for delivering services in electronic form are two critical issues. People do not know reading and writing and depends on village teacher or volunteer for these activities. Modern ICTs channels would require to be integrated with the traditional last mile channel of communication (teacher or village volunteers) for deriving early results. It will takes decades before we will see elevation in poverty and education level of rural masses, and it will be injustice if we do not design a way to integrate modern ICT enabled services into their day-to-day life. Language should not e barrier in bridging digital-divide. Dave R K Peter Abrahamsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: The lovely thing about the Internet, and the world in general, is that we do not make decisions like "the Internet shall appear in Bengali." What we do is we make it technically feasible, and we endeavour to empower people to make their own choices, individually and aggregately, as to what their Internet will look like. It's difficult to figure out what that means, and to surrender our own prejudices. Where "we" is, I don't know, the folks who are in positions to move their worlds in one direction or another. Will it not be most likely that folks will write to a local or regional audience in the appropriate language, and learn and use English to participate in the more global exchanges? Dave, thank you for your message, it made me do some good thinking. FWIW, you would do yourself a favor to promote operating systems that can be popped into a different language with ease. Does anyone want to fly me from Managua to Missouri? I want to meet Sasha and all the other fabulous folks who will be congregating there. Love, Peter Abrahamsen / [EMAIL PROTECTED] Red Libre de Ometepe / Nicaragua, Central America _______________________________________________ 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. --------------------------------- Brings words and photos together (easily) with PhotoMail - it's free and works with Yahoo! 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