The Solidarity session brought us two interesting speakers: Ramesh Srinivasan and Juliana Rotich who both work in different ways on community building of knowledge systems.
Srinivasan - mentioned yesterday on the web 3 workshop - further outlined his ideas today with “Culture Vulture – What would a diverse digital world/web look like”.
Two opening remarks: 3 billion people have mobile phones - it would be interesting to compare that figure with home computers - and most individuals appropriate technology for their own advantage. These are not entirely a surprise, and he outlined the example of fishermen sms-ing onshore villagers about the approaching tsunami.
His presentation further asked how are different people using and describing knowledge. He cited one experiment, he carried out with a group of Native Americans who were all given mobile phones and asked to describe items in a museum and create their meaning for those objects. These were of course very different to the museum‘s staff. Another interesting example (which I can hardly believe works) is the online complaint system to the Indian government. It seems that individuals can post complaints to local government on issues and the complaints can only be removed online if both parties are happy with the outcome. Furthermore the national government will reduce funds to the local government if complaints are not dealt with! Is this a system where policy makers and individuals can understand and find each other and can impact on broader and local policy?
So for the future, is this how oral, literally and digital communities are incorporated in databases? Is this how you find and make diverse mass linking on knowledge? He finished on...” what is in the mind, is now based on what you can find (online) ” …stressing the importance of systems that link with our shared diversity.
Juliana Rotich (pictured) offers us “Globalism, mobiles and clouds” – looking at individual centered content and adding to the global knowledge pool. She profiles the site: http://globalvoicesonline.org. Global Voices (“the world is talking, are you listening?”) which is an aggregated blog. The site enables local bloggers to publish content in a respected forum, which becomes increasing important with a reducing western foreign media in some regions. The site recently broke several stories such as the recent events in Madagascar.
She asks us, “What is your mobile phone strategy?” and describes technology made in Africa, by Africans that is now being implemented in other parts of the world, such as Germany and Afghanistan, to transfer money via your phone. Another noteworthy comment, she says 80% of the BBC’s mobile traffic comes from Africa. In summary, development is spreading and again others are creating their own systems and knowledge.
In reference to the photo I asked for clarification on her opinion on blogging, the answer of course linked back to the overall point: how do people find information/the blog that is relevant for them?
More tomorrow, if I survive the fondue tonight!
Con etiqueta:
geneva, knowledge, lift09, society, technology
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