Mike Gurstein recently blogged on "World Summit on the Information Society: Looking Back and Looking Forward: My Comments To a WSIS +10 Review Plenary"
It got me thinking, and prompted this response:
Thank you Mike.
Once again you are speaking in an arena where I never go - and you are speaking of "realities" that "people there" often seem distanced from - realities that are on my heart and reflect my experiences.
Ref - reputable bodies including some attending the Review are claiming that the Digital Divide and issues of Digital Inclusion have been resolved and most notably by the mobile revolution. But it should be noted that the promise of mobiles as a means to fully access and participate in the Information Society is still denied to many because of a lack of infrastructure (including electricity), the cost of service, the cost of devices, physical limitations in being able to use the devices and....
You are so right, and yours is such a welcome voice. I am so tired of hearing people who are "experts" saying "how easy it all is now" (in Africa thanks to mobile phones). Meanwhile the people I know in various locations in Africa are still struggling with the problems you mention. By definition the people I connect with are early adopters but they are not elites, nor are they part of well funded institutions or top-down projects. My contacts must simply make the best of what is available locally, and they must cover their own costs.
I was saddened to reflect back to WSIS 2003
I took an active part in a pre-WSIS 2003 discussion group called (I think) Voices of the South. I was excited that we seemed to be speaking with one voice there. I discovered that the realities I knew from an ICT related project in a rural location in SW Nigeria struck a chord with people in rural projects in other countries. I don't know if I knew the term "glocal" then - but it was what I was thinking. I believed that this flow of local experiences was going to become part of the global debate that was WSIS. I thought that was the general vision of what "the Information Society" meant - new channels of communication.
I had only been active in "Digital Divide" practicalities since 2000 so I was more optimistic and naive that I am now. Ten years on, I no longer see any connection between "people like me" and initiatives like WSIS + 10. Your post has got me asking myself why my attitude is so changed.
I think this is it.
To me a Digital Divide issue which is even greater than the, very real, issues that you mention is one relating to organisational structures.
Horizontal information flows
I speak as someone involved in non-formal, largely unfunded, digital networks where information flows freely and people who are from different countries, continents and cultures connect with each other because of shared interests and values.
In the groups where I am active we collaborate freely online, and also learn from each other. It is a culture of mutual respect and minimum formal organisation. It is a culture of ever-changing patterns of person-to-person connections and related networks of networks (It is the culture through which you and I first connected online, and continue to connect.)
Vertical information flows
This is very different from the habitual ways of communicating in hierarchical organisations - organisations that came into being before the horizontal information communication structures that are enabled by digital information flows. From where I stand it seems that "typical" hierarchical organisations, even if they do try to have two-way flows of information, see information flows in vertical "top-down and bottom up" terms. WSIS seems to me to be representative of that culture.
Dipping into both
The opportunities for connections between vertical and horizontal information flows tend to be fleeting and fluid. Thank you for the way you dip into both of the flows and enable us to mix more than would otherwise happen.
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