Telematika Pedesaan

As networking has migrated to the Web, many older adults find themselves like digital immigrants; http://j.mp/2vJkmA

This appears to be the week for statistics about online social networking. Another article as been published today on CNET detailing the growth of the various online social networks. In it they describe how Facebook continues to add users at an accelerating rate and has become predominant. In contrast, Twitter’s growth seems to have subsided after a huge growth period over the last 18 months or so. And, predictably, MySpace’s market share continues to fall as users leave it for other networks.

Growth of Facebook leaves MySpace in dust — CNET

Thanks to Mary Mehsikomer for the heads up on a recent report by the ALA, the State of Technology and Funding in U.S. Public Libraries in 2009.

I should disclose that I’m a former librarian, so I have my biases – but I’ve also seen the long lines in the library as patrons wait for their turn on the computer and on the Internet.

Some of the quick facts from the report:

• 71% of public libraries report that they are the only source of free public access to computers and the Internet in their communities;
• 80% of libraries provide hands-on assistance to patrons for understanding and using egovernment resources – up 6% from the previous year;
• 90% of libraries offer formal or informal technology assistance to library users; and
• 80% of libraries do not have enough computers to meet patron demand at all times of the day.
• In 2004 18% of libraries provided wireless access to the Internet; in 2009 that number increased to 76%

One of the points made in the report is that the library not only provides broadband access, it teaches people how to use it. I don’t think that point can be stressed too much. Librarians teach patrons how to access, assess and use information. That role is shifting as broadband brings more applications into the library. I think of a story I tracked a while back of the Cupertino Library’s JobView kiosk. I’m sure that the librarians there are helping patrons use the video aspects of the kiosk to participate in remote interviews. But they’re also reminding straighten their ties and have the résumé in hand before the webcam is turned on.

But they are expected to increasingly do more with less. They are open fewer hours, they don’t have enough computers (never mind broadband) to keep up with demand and the demand is increasing. Librarians are worried about meeting the demands of tomorrow.

I’m heading to the Minnesota Library Association meeting in St Cloud later this week. It will be interesting to hear how broadband is brought up there.

Following up on an article I posted last week, there is another interesting news article discussing how social networking is reflecting the “real” world’s socio-economic divides. Entitled, “Does Your Class Determine Your Online Social Network”, the article discusses how social networking sites are becoming increasingly polarized in terms of ethnicity and economic class. This finding runs counter to the common assumption that online networking is a democratizing activity that blurs traditional social taxonomies.

Does your social class determine your online social network? — CNN

Isn’t it ironic that we’re trying to reduce the digital inequality and poverty with ICT, while it is the ICT that caused and augments this digital divide?[1] We’re using technology to solve the problems it has caused…

In ‘End of Millennium’ Manuel Castells showed the status quo at the turn of the millennium. ‘The rise of the informational/global capitalism in the last quarter of the twentieth century coincided with the collapse of Africa’s economies, the disintegration of many of its states, and the breakdown of most of its societies’[2]. But not only in Africa. Informational capitalism is complexly linked to the rise of inequality, poverty, social polarization and misery in the whole world. Castells speaks of the ‘black holes of informational capitalism’; where, not only in the third world, but also in the first, people are socially excluded because they don’t have access to information technology. For example, habitants of American inner-city ghetto’s, illiterate persons, poor immigrants in rich countries, etc.  Those people form what he calls the ‘fourth world’; a world that is inseparable form the rise of informational global capitalism[2].

Luckily people start to become well aware of it and, some say developmental aid nowadays is even ‘cool’. Let’s take the One Laptop Per Child initiative by Nicholas Negroponte as an example. It is been a few years that they started to hand out laptops to poor children in developed countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to reduce the amount of children (almost two billion) excluded from the Internet and to empower them to learn[3]. And I believe they do. They have visited many countries over the last few years and provided a lot of children with laptops.

It certainly is a fantastic thought, but just handing out laptops won’t solve the problem. Access to ICT itself is not enough to ‘close the gap’, as there are several limitations. That is, ‘access’ to a laptop doesn’t automatically lead to access to information.

Firstly, using a laptop requires some skills. In countries where even education is scarce and children hardly can read and write, what would a laptop change? The effectiveness of the information they will have access to, depends on their capacity of understanding and interpretation[1]. A higher school level, adaptation of the education system and development of appropriate software are therefore required, not so much (a huge investment in) exaggerated quantities of computers per school. The process of teachers adapting to a new pedagogic system, in which these new information technologies are implemented, is a necessary but unfortunately long process[1].

Also, the project is based on the assumption that children go to school. But I believe many of those nearly two billion children don’t really frequent their classes. Castells stresses the fact that, for instance, many children in Asia have to work in enormous factories, weaving carpets for worldwide export. Other children live in the ‘unprotected lands of mega-cities’ slums’. Those children don’t go to school[2]. And in São Paulo for example, I experienced that many children and teenagers ‘prefer’ not to go to school and, instead of that, work, even though they have the opportunity of free education. It’s not that they don’t want to learn, but they don’t see the benefits of it. Of course they will find a laptop incredibly cool, but without guidance and instructions I don’t think it would change their situations.

Furthermore, new technologies are always used by the rich first, and will only later become available for the poor. The development of new technologies always continues, so the gap will never close and the inequality will only become bigger and bigger[1]. That is what in fact is happening with OLPC project. Not only are the laptops inferior and way less advanced compared to the western technology and do issues as wi-fi access play significant roles, also, western actors (Microsoft and Intel) produce and sell these inferior laptops to the Third World and derive profits of it![4] So who’ll in the end get better of it?

Last week I read a blog about appropriate technology, written by a non-Malawian teacher in Malawi, that gave a practical example of my thoughts. He stresses the principle that developing countries should be given technology that meshes with their current state of development. He anecdotally writes how he discovered a box full of green OLPC laptops in the school’s storage room that had remained untouched for months. None of the teachers knew what to do with the laptops and after trying to use the laptops in a couple of classes they left them alone, back in the stock room… The $2300 spent on the laptops would have been enough to pay the tuition for 23 students for a year[6].

Castells stresses an important question: Can the developed world, where older technologies are often prevalent or don’t even exist at all, ‘leapfrog’ over the successive generations of technology to the newest ICT or not[4][5]? That is the key issue. Of course the third world countries and the two billion children without access do not all live under the same ‘poor’ circumstances. I think the OLPC project is too advanced to be used in rural African villages or in slums where children don’t even have food, water, health and shelter. On the other hand, there are more developed but still very poor children to whom the step toward ‘digital literacy’ is smaller. An examination of the situation in Rio de Janeiro demonstrates that many people do use ICT, but don’t have money for own computers or have very little and poor access[1]. I think those people form a big part of the fourth world and I think those people are ‘ready’ for further development in ICT. But then there is still the problem of inferior technology, wi-fi access and the profits made out of the production.

“ (…) what is needed is an advanced $0 laptop with free software for people in developing countries as well as criticism of the capitalist logic that has caused the divide between developing and developed countries and solutions to the social, economic, political, and cultural inequalities that underpin the global digital divide.”[4]

But maybe we should rather focus more on a bottom up process that starts at the ‘beginning’. ICT is now embedded in our daily life, society and economy, but that has been a development. We can’t expect the fourth world to skip that process and simply ‘leapfrog’ into our level of ICT. But on the other hand, since it is their very right to have the same (ICT) applications as we have, ‘appropriate technology’ will never change their situation very much either. Should we perhaps develop new technologies to solve the problems…?

[1] Sorj, B. and Guedes, L.E., ‘Exclusão digital: problemas conceituais, evidências empíricas e políticas públicas’ in Digitofagia; Radical Livros 2006

[3] One Laptop Per Child Website – Laptop.org

[2] Castells, M., ‘End of Millennium’, 2000

[4] Fuchs, C., Horak, E. ‘Information Capitalism and the Digital Divide in Africa’, 2007

[5] Castells, M., Fernández-Ardevol, M., Linchuan Qiu, J. & Sey, A., ‘Mobile Communication and Society; A Global Perspective’. Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 2007.

[6] Teaching in Africa – Jesse’s Blog

“Meaningful Broadband” Model Released Soon at Chulalongkorn Forum

By Wisit Stephens, special to Bangkok Post

Fed up with delay surrounding Thailand’s 3G and Wimax deployments, the secretariat of a powerful Chulalongkorn-based think tank will release a report October 28, presenting a model to vastly accelerate the nation’s broadband deployment.

Headlining the event, to be held at Sasin Graduate School of Business, 1-4 pm that afternoon, will be True Corp. CEO Supachai Chearavanont, in his role as Rotating Chairman of Chulalongkorn’s Meaningful Broadband Working Group.  The Forum will be October 28 at Sasin Graduate School of Business, 1-4 pm, sponsored by Cisco Systems.

“The report shows that broadband is a necessary condition for macroeconomic growth.  But Thailand ranks close to the bottom of all Asian nations in broadband deployment,” said Supachai. “The situation is reversible.  But unless the country’s leaders in government, academia, business act quickly, Thailand’s entire economy is at risk.”

The report,  A Model to Close Digital Divide, formulates a business model that would more than triple fixed and wireless broadband penetration in Thailand from the current predicted level of 17%  by 2015,  to more than 50%, a target called for by the ICT Minister Ranongrak Suwanchawee.

“The Forum, for the Chulalongkorn community, with some space available to the general public, will be opened by Dr. Charas Suwanwela, Chairman of the University Council. Individuals interested in attending the forum can register after Oct 20 at www.meaningfulbroadband.org.

Supachai recently replaced NTC commissioners as temporary leader of Meaningful Broadband Working Group, which includes the top executives of AIS, DTAC, TOT Telecom and CAT Telecom, as well as the government’s NTC.   After gaining public feedback, the report will be revised and formally presented for the consideration of the Working Group and to the Prime Minister within the next several weeks.

This is Helen Milner’s – managing director of UK Online Centres – presentation, made at the Digital Engagement Conference in London on 6 October 2009. It highlights some of the main, existing factors that still prevent greater digital inclusion in the UK (ie. why 25% of UK adults have never used the internet), what motivates people to get online and why it matters. In Helen’s words, “It’s about people, not pipes”. It’s well worth going through.

Notes
The context of the presentation is made within such reports as the UK government’s Digital Britain proposals.
The Twitter feed of the conference can be read here.