I'm not sure that I agree with the Steve Eskow's relativist position "The telecenter that enriches one community leads to a deepening of discord and violence in the next one"...
I would prefer to see telecenters as part of a broad process of enabling communities with ICTs which I do see overall as a universal public good with some bad applications. I think we should see the development of "effective uses" of ICTs in the same way as we see for example, widespread access to clean water, sanitation, and vaccinations against things like polio--as universal advances in public welfare with side-effects and potential risks that need to be anticipated and managed. Structured or usable access to ICT enabled information and services is supporting the development of educational and health service in aboriginal communities throughout the Canadian North; increased transparency and accountability in government services in North Africa; improved training for para-medics in sub-Saharan Africa, opportunities for local economic development in communities in Central America; and so on and so on... And yes, there are bad and even dangerous applications, and certainly access in itself is insufficient http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue8_12/gurstein/index.html but providing the means at the community level to participate in the rapidly emerging benefits and opportunities of the Information Society seems to me to be worth whatever risks may attend to this. Mike Gurstein Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. Editor in Chief: Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ashish Saboo Sent: May 9, 2005 2:14 PM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Cc: John Hibbs; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [email protected] Subject: [Telecentres] Re: RE: [DDN] Digital Divide, Telecentres and Iraq On Mon, 09 May 2005 John Hibbs wrote : >At 1:07 PM -0700 5/7/05, Dr. Steve Eskow wrote: >>The telecenter that enriches one community that lead to a deepening of >>discord and violence in the next one. Dr. Steve Eskow, Thanks for speaking up frankly . Your views are very important to the debate on the Telecentre initiatives . Let me quote another Andy, Andy "Intel" Grove once said when he was chosen as Man of the year by Time magazine :"asking whether technology is good or bad is like asking is steel bad or good? because the same steel that takes a life through a knife can save a life by becoming a syringe. so, its in our hands what we want to make of it" . IMHO so is the case with Telecentre initiatives . The entire model is very consumer centric , What information you want is just a click away. choice is yours . You mentioned : "Perhaps it is more accurate to say that when people resort to violence it is because they are not satisfied with being heard: they want to prevail. " I beg to differ, Working with many telecenters at the grassroot level , may I add it is because they are not as capable in articulating their views as successfully as others and the frustration drives them into violence. some Internet tools like blogs offer the cheapest option to experiment for all to express themselves. All acceptance of technology have followed the same path, Internet's promise to help in getting hard to find data excited people to adopt ICT tools. Its differrnet question what is this criticalliterature ?. It will be a grave mistake to 'sainitize' Telecentres. which will be considered as another prapoganda tool. Instead it is for us Telecentre advocates to bring in the message the better means for bringing progress. & when the neighbour realises the benefit of telecentres do we really require those extra security guards to mann them ? tHe journey for all of us is not too simple, As you said "The telecenter that enriches one community that lead to a deepening of discord and violence in the next one." it requires a leap of faith for us to be convinced the other way as a tool in briging closer understanding . Deploying ICT tools vehicle as a telecentre In all the developing communities face an additional challege that of lack of literacy and articulate cpabilities and the cost. The unrestrained access to sex and voilence has terribly deprecated the telecentre's existence and have undermined many positive possiblities which requires ubiquity of tools. Till then we Telecentre advocates have to promote and inspire the positive abilities and as sense of belonging, Do read my last two posts on my blog http://apiap.blogspot.com/2005/05/small-town-cyber-cafe-operator-helps.h tml http://apiap.blogspot.com/2005/03/pakistans-fast-bowler-mohammad-khalil. html Sincerely Ashish Saboo President Association of Public Internet Access Provider (ApiAp) The voice of independent Cyber cafe operators URL: http://www.apiap.cybernook.net Blog: http://apiap.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ telecentres mailing list [email protected] http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/telecentres To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
