Posted on Monday, October 17, 2005 2:27 PM
The 'Open Source and Digitial Inclusion'
conference, organised by the Norwegian Network on ICT and Development will start in a couple of days. I have a very drafty paper ready. For now, I will only share the abstract:
A preoccupation with content and connectivity in bridging the digital divide obscures the role of information technology in making different ways of knowing and other logics and experiences visible or invisible. How to deal with this diversity in information technology? The examples of the Development Gateway, the Open Knowledge Network, the Indymedia Network, and TAMI, an Aboriginal database, show that this is done in different ways. They propose that there is more at stake than “hardwiring” diversity through localisation work facilitated by the technical efficiency of FLOSS. The analysis draws attention to FLOSS as enabling political and ethical positions that result in dealing with difference in the source code.
Discourse on the digital divide generally assumes that digital inclusion is good for all and everybody has the right to access knowledge and information. This rights-based approach is based on an understanding that knowledge can be digitalised. We create new categories of invisibility by generalising about digitalisation. It is time we look at the ethics of digitalisation. Today I came across the text of a speech by Prof. Erica-Irene A. Daes (link to text). She says:"
"I would like to suggest that, for Indigenous peoples, the major problem of the future will not be gaining access to the internet, but keeping their most private and sacred knowledge out of the internet."