"I have seen that even a small village like mine can benefit a lot from the internet.

We can use it to generate money for the village, to provide quality education for our children, to provide information about our culture to children all over the world, and to invite volunteers to come to our village.

If everything goes well, I plan to build a college in my village and provide computer courses to the students. This will open a door for us to produce computer programmers in the village, and produce software for the big firms around the world."

redux [09.05.00]
Sustainable Development Dimensions The first mile of connectivity: Advancing telecommunications for rural development through participatory communication

"AS DEVELOPMENT THINKING has shifted towards sustainability and participation, there have been remarkable and rapid developments in computing and communication technologies which offer exciting possibilities for rural communities to move into the information age. For this to happen there needs to be a concerted, multisectoral approach to information technology with a focus on rural populations as communicators and contributors to information and knowledge, rather than passive consumers. There also needs to be a move from looking at technology and asking, "What can we do with this?" to looking at people's needs and asking, "Which technology might help here?"

Critical and analytical work on the introduction of information technologies has to be drawn largely from reports of urban projects. In most countries this is where the introduction and use of information technology takes place. However, if we are to consider pushing the use of information technologies out to the rural areas there are lessons to be learned from these projects, and also from the introduction of technologies (e.g., video, radio, drama, print media) used to support communication in rural development."

redux [04.10.01]
Feed The Three Stooges Play Zunil

"Can Mayan culture stand up to the global culture? Sure, says Audelino Sac. "First, we have to strengthen our own culture. Then, once we have established our own identity, we can receive from, but also give to, the process of globalization. Mayan culture shouldn't be against technology. We have always adopted new technologies." The example he uses is the corn mill. I guess you could add rayon and artificially dyed threads.

Then this Mayan priest -- dressed in green jeans, thick-soled black shoes, and an open-necked striped shirt -- says something that, in my view, cuts to the heart of the issue here: "All cultures," he states, "are dynamic and able to take positive things from other cultures."

Dynamic, yes -- a thousand times yes. If there's one thing I've learned on my trip so far, it's that cultures are not, and never were, inert."

redux [08.07.00]
First Monday Negotiating the Global and the Local: How Thai Culture Co-opts the Internet

"As the Internet is spreading around the globe, a problem is created concerning its impact on the local cultures. This paper argues that the relation between computer-mediated communication technologies and local cultures is characterized neither by a homogenizing effect, where the technologies bring about one global monolithic culture, nor by an erecting of barriers separating one culture from another, where there is no impact at all. Instead, local cultures usually find ways to cope with the impact and are resilient enough to absorb it without losing some kind of identity. A case study is presented on a local Internet scene in Thailand to see how Thai culture co-opts the Internet and how its identity is being constantly negotiated."

redux [04.23.00]
Netfuture I'm Glad The Internet 'Corrodes' My Culture

"I have spent my whole life in Corrientes, Argentina. Even as it is a state-capital and my family is relatively well-off, there are tons of cultural treasures that I couldn't have known if it wasn't for the Net, and not only knowledge or information, but whole mental frames: a passionate, whole-hearted love for science and philosophy, self-respect as a computer geek, excellent non-contemporary thinking (like Chesterton's, Voltaire's or Shaw's), non-hispanoameric poetry, enlightenment values and, yes, all kinds of erotic information and art (OK, pornography, too :), along with lots of other things.

Those things, althought mostly intellectual in nature, have, as you have pointed, corroded my "native" culture, to the point that I feel more at ease with Scientific American, the Need to Know e-zine, the Linux scene or the Discordian(-like) humor|philosophy. I still have my friends, my girlfriend and my family here, but I don't think I share my culture with them anymore (not that this started wholly with the Net; I have read Asimov from age 6, programmed from age 7, &c., but the richness of the Net has deepened it to the point of making myself councious of it).

It has its social and psychological side effects, but I wouldn't go back for all the group status of the world. I like this culture a lot more than my "native" one, for sheer deepness, meaning and beauty."

redux [02.18.01]
The Third Culture The Globalization Debate

"Though the notion that we live in an era of unprecedented globalization is becoming increasingly evident, that change is more often than not attributed exclusively to the convergence of technology with the financial markets. But too often in these discussions, the larger point is missed: that we have a historic opportunity. As Anthony Giddens, director of the London School of Economics, writes, "we have the chance to take over where the 20th century failed, and a key project for us is to drag the history of the 21st century away from that of the 20th."

According to Giddens, "the driving force of the new globalization is the communications revolution," and beyond its effects on the individual, this revolution is fundamentally altering the way public institutions interact."

redux [09.13.01]
The New York Times When Villages Go Global: How a Byte of Knowledge Can Be Dangerous, Too
[requires 'free' registration]

"The prospects seemed bright when the Internet was recently introduced in a remote part of the mountainous Cotopoxi region in Ecuador. Under the guidance of aid workers, Quichua-speaking peasants planned to gather crop information and sell their crafts over the Web.

Soon, though, it was discovered that some of the men were using the computer to visit pornographic sites."

"Dismayed, the women began to question how the men were treating them, and a debate ensued over the common practice of beating women. Although use of the Internet was later curtailed, its introduction unexpectedly generated discussion on a once taboo topic.

"The changes created by the Internet in rich industrialized nations are well known, affecting everything from how people date to how they work. But less is known about the impact on societies with limited contact with the rest of the world. As such experiments multiply, at least one outcome seems certain: the way people in these communities relate to each other and with the world is likely to be altered forever."