[iDC] Collective Action

Fri Jun 30 20:48:10 EDT 2006

Trebor Scholz escreveu:

>>America is the world's richest country; it's not surprising that there
>>are a lot of Internet users there.  Do you have statistics for any
>>poor countries?
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
north-america you mean.. :)
is brazil a  poor country? not on football, on food, on landscape, joy 
.. hehe

>Ben, thanks for your respons.
>
>Can blogs, wikis, and other participatory web architectures change the
>world for the better; does the sociable web reach developing countries?
>Currently, not even a quarter of the world's population has Internet
>access. 70% of North Americans are able to go online-- Europe 36%, Asia
>roughly 10%, and Africa 2%. Willinsky's arguments for Open Access to
>research don't apply to those who don't have net access in the first
>place. But -- imagine-- what would a broad movement of bloggers/citizen
>journalists in Africa, bring to the attention of the rest of the world?
>This would be a personal reporting with an affect that you would not
>find on CNN. 
>  
>
of course it can reach! we have been doing free software workshops, 
hardware, communication and gender practices for over 2 years now, on 
pontos de cultura (ministry of culture, communications), as independent 
media practicioners (metareciclagem, midiatatica and estudiolivre).org 
with children at over 60's, hip hop centers to public schools and 
indigenous communities..

some pictures
metareciclagem
http://www.metareciclagem.org/gallery

gesac - satelite intrenet for remote areas
http://galeria.idbrasil.org.br/

it is great and important to connect internet to tactical media, such as 
print, walls, stencils, t-shirts, important media such as free radio, 
computer reciclying, collective acess spaces (telecentros) and so on..

>Already now, South Africa, for a start, has an active Indymedia.
>
>Resources of the sociable web including Wikipedia are still of little
>use to those without a computer and command of English. Most African
>languages have only about a thousand articles in Wikipedia. The problems
>encountered are ranging from keyboards supporting a particular language
>to computer manuals in a local language.
>  
>
most softwares are in english, command lines, tutorials.. we make music 
with them for remembering
http://xemele.cultura.gov.br/culturadigital/audios/linhadecomando.ogg
cooperative translation projects are also in process..

>The current explosion of the cellphone industry in Africa is a widely
>known fact. Africans may not have ready access to the Internet but more
>than half of them own mobile phones with SMS capability but without the
>ability to run the Internet. In South Africa, net access is still sparse
>but alternatively banks are looking into low cost banking options via
>cellphones. Notably, also the world's first feature-length movie was
>shot on a cellphone in SouthAfrica. The film titled ³SMS Sugar Man² was
>directed by Aryan Kaganof and the story, not far as interesting as the
>technology, is about a pimp and two high class prostitutes.
>  
>
here in brazil there are more mobile users than internet

we have tried to work with this media with mimoSa
http://turbulence.org/Works/mimoSa
we are studying it!

>Currently there are several initiatives that are focusing on educating
>African youth via cellphone. Tomi Ahonen reports that "There are more
>radios than mobile phones, but those radios are in North America and
>Western Europe, built into our cars etc. In Asia, Africa and Latin
>America many more mobile phones exist than radios. ...  30% of the total
>population on the planet carries a mobile phone. Every one of them can
>do basic texting, basic mobile commerce, receive basic news, etc. "
>
>The future of the sociable web in developing countries is the bridging
>between simple mobile phones and the resources available online. The
>project MobilED is a good example:
>
>In March 2006 the pilot of MobilED was launched with teachers of Corwall
>Hill College in Preotoria (South Africa). The project focuses on
>HIV/AIDS and is for 15-16 year-olds. "The platform will offer access to
>Wikipedia content with SMS, so that students can search the Wikipedia by
>sending a query term to the server.  The server will then call back and
>a speech synthesizer will read the article for them."
>
>The 2004 blog explosion did not make it to the sub-Saharan Africa with
>the exception of South Africa. For most Africans the Internet is as far
>away as a semi-soy latte at a Starbucks. With little net access and all
>of the action happening in North America and Europe, so far blogging was
>limited to Western ex-pats. But this is changing: the Ethiopian blogging
>scene is up and coming with blogs like Nazret.com. And, outside of
>Africa, in South Korea, OhmyNews is a strong and successful example of
>the sociable web.
>
>Ethan Zuckerman points out that through citizen journalism and the
>sociable web the world will have more access to what is going on in
>places that are not sufficiently covered by news agencies.
>
>Zuckerman: "None but the largest news agencies are able to pay the
>travel costs and insurance for reporters to cover these stories. Most
>choose not to cover a conflict that's bloody, dangerous, difficult to
>summarize in a soundbite and unknown to most of their readers or
>viewers. The net result - we simply don't have information about many
>parts of the globe relevant to world debate. ... Even when we do have
>some information about under-covered parts of the world, we have another
>problem, what Ito terms "the caring problem". People pay attention to
>subjects they care about. They tend to ignore subjects they know little
>about. Media, trying to serve its customers in a free market, responds
>by giving them more information on subjects they've demonstrated an
>interest in and ignoring other subjects."
>
>Mark Warschauer's work on Technology and Social Inclusion is also
>definitely worth considering in this context.
>
>Citizen journalism that cares about local topics in Congo, for example,
>will produce a decisively different media sphere than that currently
>shaped by CNN and others. Initiatives like MIT's $100 laptop contribute
>to better computer access in Africa. But cellphones, not the Internet,
>dominate Africa and cater to cultures that are shaped by oral
>traditions.
>
>The future of the sociable web in Africa is mobile. 
>  
>

yes, for sure! mobile but maybe not textual.. we have to have this is 
mind.. they have done films, we do a lot of music.. :)

xt

>-Trebor
>
>Links, Charts and References:
>http://collectivate.net/journalisms/
>
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