Hello All Some help please if you are interested in World Summit on the Information Society, or in the work the NZ Government is doing (or not doing) to promote ITC use in NZ.
Regarding WSIS I think there is far too much emphasis on the growth of the telecommunications industry and far too little focus on the sensible use of resources. Broadband might be nice, but it's not essential, and it's not a good use of resources (even in NZ) to offer broadband access to almost everyone. In third world countries it far more critical to supply clean water and Hiv-Aids protection, to stop the aggressive sale of tobacco and a 100 other things ahead of broadband access. The focus there needs to be on low cost but capable computers, optimised for email in ASCII mode. Email, lists, texts in local languages, html applications available but not the main focus. In the third world freedom from censorship and harassment and arbitrary detention based on email communication or use of the WWW would be nice. Sadly, everywhere governments are keen to get the "official propaganda" out, and are reluctant to allow open public communication. Interestingly the official propaganda is that you can’t trust the things said on the internet. I can think of many topics where the best information and the only access to something close to the truth is on the internet. For instance mainstream newspapers in the USA are now saying openly that there never were any WMD in Iraq. That "news" has been available and well documented on the internet for at least two years. So where was the best and most reliable "information"? Everywhere far more focus is required on how people are using their computers and on how they might improve their knowledge in ways that they find interesting and desirable. Those who are heavy users like myself completely miss the mark when we suggest what would be good for average users. That's a problem. (If you want to tell me how you use the internet, email, chat rooms, irc, instant messages, lists, web publishing, blogging, etc I’m interested. Please do some counting, numbers, time, frequency.) The NZ Government set forth 7 objectives 12 months ago. They established a community web site, which I'm sure hardly any of you know about. Not much loss actually because there's nothing happening there. See http://www.community.net.nz/ Those 7 objectives are: 1/. To develop and adapt best-practice ICT planning tools for community organisations. 2/. To co-ordinate central government assistance. 3/. To strengthen organisational infrastructures to support community ITC access. 4/. To develop communications and networking. 5/. To develop an ICT research and evaluation programme. 6/. To ensure the availability of training programmes for workers supporting community ICT projects. 7/. Relationship development and partnership leveraging between communities, the government and key corporate and philanthropic sponsors. A potentially useful set of words but I can't see it happening. I'm fairly sure that they don't have a clue what to do. Community.net.nz/ is certainly not a leading example of community participation. Look at other government web sites, they have improved, but they are designed like newspapers, they are broadcasting official points of view. Mostly people are not going to be interested unless we can see their own point of view reflected and understood. Essentially government decision makers don't understand what they are dealing with. Comments would be appreciated. This might be off topic for this list, although I think it concerns us all. Private replies might be best. Regards John
