Hi All, Forget about physical access to information via the Internet. Cognitive access is an even bigger problem. Finding the right information and being able to use it effectively are going to be the major hurdles to any benefits the Internet can bring to the table.
:| BC Vice President, Advocacy & Promotion, IASL: www.iasl-online.org [EMAIL PROTECTED]: http://www.chs.ecu.edu.au/portals/LIS/index.php Transforming Information and Learning Conference http://conferences.scis.ecu.edu.au/TILC2007/ Barbara Combes, Lecturer School of Computer and Information Science Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia Ph: (08) 9370 6072 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation." Walter Cronkite This email is confidential and intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify me immediately by return email or telephone and destroy the original message. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christian Einfeldt Sent: Friday, 22 August 2008 6:29 AM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: Re: [DDN] Interview footage from "The Future of the InternetEconomy" - OECD Ministerial Meeting in Seoul, Korea,June 16-18, 2008. hi, On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 10:43 PM, Paperless Homework < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Fouad, > > Alan here again. > > I tried to view your video but somehow it is taking ages to download. > Maybe the broadband we have is a bit slow. > yeah, they are large files. It is better to try to watch the video on-line, I guess, because the files are smaller. > To my view the greatest challenges in the years ahead is not to what > levels Internet will take the human race to, but rather can Internet > reaches out to the other 5 billion unconnected or excluded. I completely agree. That is the main point of our film, the Digital Tipping Point. Ironically, though, it is also the limited financial means of the remaining 5 billion people that will push Free Open Source Software. It is difficult to see how they can afford Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office at current prices. Ironically, it is these people who will be helping to restore competition to the North American market, because adoption in markets outside the US will drive improvement of the code base, thereby making it more difficult for Microsoft to continue to exert its monopoly power over the North American market. These "poor" people outside the US will therefore bring freedom to North America! Currently, North Americans largely agree that free software must be either stolen or low quality. They believe that only expensive things can have value. They mistakenly de-value both the Free Software and the people who use it, thinking that Free Software users must either be unintelligent or thieves or both. This mind set is imprisoning North Americans into dependence on one company (Microsoft) and perhaps two companies (Apple). People in North America are a huge resource for these companies, who regard North America and Europe as gold mines. The gold is in the pockets of the consumers, who are too focused on advertising to shape their technology choices. We want to change that focus. We want people to understand that you can get quality software for free as in beer and Free as in freedom. But we also want people to understand that even Free Software is not free software. People must give something. They must give either time or money to support their communities. So we are trying to encourage people to see value and purchase paid solutions, such as the small company Zareason.com, which offers high quality Free Software solutions at a reasonable price. > Technology today is only able to reach out to the 1 billion or less > people of the world and as it progresses to greater heights it would > only be these > 1 billion that would benefit. The others would be left even further behind. Exactly! How can Microsoft afford to support another 1 billion people with free copies of its non-Free software? It can't. On the other hand, the Free Open Souce Software projects can work with for-profit companies to spread the code to the developing work. A network of 3 billion people using Free Open Source Software is more powerful than a network of 900 million using expensive proprietary software. > I think your offerings do have great future in such directions and > emphasis should be into this direction. > All of our video is your video. All you need is one place locally to be able to download and store the video, and then you can share it locally with sneaker networks. Our project is an open source project. We need someone to take responsibility for transcribing the video. We have 360 hours of video. We cannot transcribe and translate all of that video ourselves! We need help! Thank you for contacting me! -- Christian Einfeldt, Producer, The Digital Tipping Point _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@digitaldivide.net http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. This e-mail is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient you must not disclose or use the information contained within. If you have received it in error please return it to the sender via reply e-mail and delete any record of it from your system. The information contained within is not the opinion of Edith Cowan University in general and the University accepts no liability for the accuracy of the information provided. CRICOS IPC 00279B _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@digitaldivide.net http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
