[governance] Themes for the coming IGFs

[Michael Gurstein]

Since we are doing some brainstorming here could I suggest that we consider
the theme of "digital inclusion"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_inclusion which I understand to be a
"positive" in comparison to the negative cast of the mirror notion of the
"digital divide".

As well, the notion of "digital inclusion" adds a normative element to the
discussion which moves things way beyond the somewhat neutral (tending
towards "marketing") connotation of the current theme of "access" (which
seems to deliberately ignore the obvious question(s) of "access for
what/why/who/how/when/where". 

My prefered theme of course would be "effective use" i.e. how to make the
Internet useful/usable to the both the current and next 5 billion but that's
I guess for a later time.

"Digital literacy" of course, is closely related and probably can be cast as
a pre-condition for effective "digital inclusion" although of course not all
elements of "digital literacy" would (or could) be included within "digital
inclusion" (or v.v.).

MG 

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Pimienta [mailto:pimienta at funredes.org] 
Sent: December-15-08 3:44 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: [governance] Themes for the coming IGFs


Saludos todas y todos,

First of all, sorry I had to cancel last minute my participation in 
Hyderabad's IGF Diversity session
for a health situation which is over now.

This is my first contribution to the list which I joined last March, 
but it was not
easy to catch up with the permanent and intense flow :-).

I did read carefully all the contributions in the "themes for the 
coming IGFs" thread
and I would like to share with you my concern for a theme which is too often
underlooked and was not mentionned in spite of the numerous contributions.

I am refering to "digital and information literacy" ...
which directly refers to "info-ethics" and indirectly to "diversity".

What use of the Internet would make the next billion connected users 
if they are not Internauts
(in the ethymological sense of the term, a person who is in capacity to make
a meaninfgul use of the Net)?

How to improve the level of ethics of netusers  (which we all witness 
is in the drop
with important consequences for the Internaut communities) without 
appropriate education?

If we want people to get ownership and empowered by the Internet, shall not
we make provision and organize digital literacy for them?

We were told by Aymarta Sen that Human Development, which is what I 
suppose we aim at
by connecting people, requires capacities. It is not enough to 
connect hardware and software,
we need to "connect the brains" for people being in real capacity to 
transform information into
knowledge and contribute to the public domain of knowledge.

I don't mean to be long, so I will refer to a paper which tries to 
demonstrate the link
between digital divide and digital literacy and where my arguments 
for considering
digital literacy a still deeper challenge than access are organized (by the
way the argument that literacy is included in access is 
barely acceptable to me
as it feeds the dangerous confusion beetween real literacy, a complex 
and long task,
and simple training  in Windows plus Office Suite a perverse approach 
as it does not
open the way!).
"Digital Divide, Socisal Divide, Paradigmatic Divide":
http://funredes.org/mistica/english/cyberlibrary/thematic/Paradigmatic_Divid
e.pdf

As far as I know there is a group of profesionals who generally 
shares with Funredes this
vision that digital and information literacy is a top priority issue 
for the Information
Societies to emerge: the librarians.

I am not myself a librarian and I wonder if this group is well enough 
represented in IGF:
I am convinced that librarians are the oldest skilled information 
profesionals in history
and shall take a more active stand in IGF (I also think that times 
where librarians were slow to
understand the impact of the Net are over now).

FUNREDES will come back within few weeks with a worldwide campaign 
linking digital
literacy, info-ethics ... and Global Warming (!) and will share it in 
this forum.

Cordialmente,
Daniel

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