[Sigiii-l] Plaza: Multiculturalim

[Michel J. Menou]

With his kind permission I am reproducing here a message from Claude
Almansi, a training officer with ADISI, the Association for computer
law of Italian Switzerland.
IMO opinion, it nicely illustrates the long way we have to go in order
to be prepared for a multi-cultural and equalitarian information
society. As long as we assume that the "less advanced" have nothing to
offer and must learn everything from the "more advanced" we will
remain in the current mess.
Sorry it is a bit long but the story is worth reflecting.
Best regards,
 
Michel

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From: "Claude Almansi" <claude.almansi at bluewin.ch>
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003  3:07:58 AM US/Pacific
To: "Information Society: Voices from the South" <is at dgroups.org>
Subject: [is] Re: Right to communicate? - local expertise about social
uses of ICT - Northern ICT middle-brows and middle-men

Current topic: Freedom, rights, laws and ethics: How to address these
issues for Information Society in the South?


/

Re the UNESCO Switzerland (ch) seminar for Experts on How to Bridge
the Digital Divide last March in Lugano: my apologies to those who
already Read the story.

Background: like the Swiss Executive Secretariate for WSIS, UNESCO.ch
sent "newsletters" that were 700k+ e-mails with attachments (Word in
their case) and 250+ names on the "To" line. Now they got the idea
that addies can be put on Bcc, but they didn't understand the
explanation abouthaving the Newsletter on their site and sending links
to the headings' URLs with a brief description.
I translated a Swiss prelimanary "Expert paper" into English. The
original .doc file was huge too. Whoever typed it had no idea about
how to use titles to get a table of content, nor about how to quote a
website, nor about the fact that it is bloody rude - and in civilised
countries, illegal - to copy-paste a list of links from a site without
acknowledging where it came from. The paper showed a well-nigh total
ignorance of info in English about the Digital Divide - whether
organisations involved or projects.

As to the actual content: they kept insisting on the necessity for
Southern Countries to get into partnerships with universities of "More
Advanced Countries" (like theirs, I presume) to conceive and implement
development projects. And they advocated a "middle-level" training in
ICT to keep people locally, blaming Cisco's high level training for
the brain drain. It reminded me of the UNDP-ILO labour-intensive (vs
tech-intensive) development projects in the 70's, with a difference:
the labour-intensive idea aimed at freeing local communities from
foreign dependance, because tech-intensive help often came with a
heavy rider of getting maintenance assistance from the original
company producing said tech.

The authors of the paper seemed to have got stuck at this 70's
concept, and not to have realised that with ICT, the situation is
reversed: the description of their "middle-level" training in ICT
would mean continued dependance from proprietary software - hence
their appeal to the business sector  to make licences available at
cheaper prices in "Less Advanced Countries", and to governments of
"More Advanced Countries" to chip in for the difference and/or put
pressure on the business sector so that ...etc.

They had never heard about Microsoft's "generosity" to "Less Advanced
Countries", let alone of the Peruvian Parliament ingratefully sending
MS packing, with subsequent attempt by the MS Peruvian representative
to Have the Parliament's decision declared anticonstitutional because
it was allegedly against free choice to impose free software. I don't
know much about Cisco certification: I know it is offered at
universities in Ghana and Nigeria, and that our aborigene "Digital
Divide Experts" would be hard put to get such a certificate (so would
I, but I never claimed to be an expert). Actually, they would be hard
put to get the European Computer Driving License (no, I'm not
inventing this: www.ecdl.org ) which, in its Italian version at least,
is unadulteratedly MS (windows + MS Office). In the course booklet and
online description, Netscape gets mentioned once - nothing on free
software or Mac programs.

In spite of my declared non-expert status, I wriggled into the
Experts'seminar. On the first afternoon, the opening address was all
about More Advanced and Less Advanced Countries, thanking the Experts
from More Advanced Countries for indicating who were their partners
from Less Advanced Countries, whom UNESCO.ch had thus been able to
invite. I was angry and could perceive harmonics of anger from the
"Less Advanced Country Partners".

The following morning was workshops. I avoided the one I had
translated the
preliminary paper for, and got into the Media one. There again, our
local Expert went on and on about Less and More Advanced Countries in
his introduction. Afterwards, I asked for the floor and suggested that
Switzerland and "More Advanced EU Countries" should get help from
"Less Advanced Countries" for basic ICT literacy programs and for
shaping an Information Society policy, about which these Northern
countries hadn't the foggiest idea - and in exchange, these Northern
Countries should finance local development projects and refrain from
clumsily barging into their conception.

I did it to relieve the tension, because it was easier for me than for
people who had been invited from far away and therefore had qualms
about breaking hospitality laws. You don't look  in the mouth of a
given horse, you don't spit in the offered soup, that sort of
feelings. But mainly because I deeply believe in this.

Here, paradoxically, it is our experts who are slowing down ICT
literacy. When the tech experts give "informatics" courses about basic
use of MS Office programs, they carefully refrain from pointing to the
help menu, or to tell people that they can open a writing document in
another window to take notes on what they do. The
ICT-in-distance-training experts are well-meaning, but more often than
not ICT-illiterate, and totally unaware of what happens beyond Europe.
So they are reinventing existing tools and materials in projects
financed by Erasmus or Leonardo EU programs, and keep insisting on the
necessity of intercessors between tech people and program developpers
- because they themselves need them. See www.wpm.ch , for instance.
WPM stands for Web Project Manager, one of those new intercessing
professional figures promoted by our ICT-in-distance-training experts.

I recently taught a "computers don't bite"* class in a course for
newbies organised by one of these new fangled WPM's. Had I not
insisted on trying the computer lab before the course, he would never
have. He came along, and got pissed off because there was no
DreamWeaver, and he had put DreamWeaver in the course description - a
course for newbies. He added that nowaday, basic computer literacy
should also include Flash. I typed http://eldred.cc in the URL window,
hit return and told him that this was the ideal format for a distance
training site. "It's so Luddite, so outdated", he reacted. "Nowadays,
everybody knows that you must keep up with the newest tech". I
retorted about accessibility for all, even on an old computer and with
a slow modem connexion, and told him Lawrence Lessig hardly qualified
as a luddite. He'd never heard the name, let alone knew about Eldred
or Sony Bono or DMCA. The WPM course he had taken offered nothing on
public domain, fair use and author's rights. A typical example of what
the Digital Divide Experts meant by "middle-level" training in the
paper I translated .

Back to your fundamental ethical question, i.e. how can Southern
Countries'
expertise be appropriately rewarded: it is a key issue, but I'm afraid
one that might get hi-jacked at WSIS as a pretext to justify
preference for proprietary software, DMCA etc.

Cheers

Claude

Claude Almansi
claude.almansi at bluewin.ch
www.adisi.ch ADISI Associazione di diritto informatico della Svizzera
Italiana

* In the end, the class was called "introduction to the PC" by the
WPM, who objected to "computers don't bite" because it lacked
seriousness.