[REpensar Barcelona] Fwd: Communaute-EDM: Re: FYI France: review,
"Word Matters", the InfoSociety
Luis Ángel
luisangelfh en gmail.com
Jue Feb 23 17:57:07 CET 2006
Quizá interese la crítica que ha aparecido en California del libro
"Palabras en Juego", cuyo capítulo sobre Comunidades Virtuales me tocó
escribir a mí y que ahora está íntegro aquí:
http://www.lafh.info/articleViewPage.php?art_ID=543
>> Hervé Le Crosnier wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bonjour,
>>>
>>> Jack Kessler is a library consultant in San Francisco.
>>> He write a monthly newletter talking about France
>>> and French point of view for the library world, from
>>> a californian point of view.
>>>
>>> His last essay is about our book "Word Matters/
>>> Palabras en juego/Desafios de palavras/Enjeux de mots".
>>>
>>> I hope you will enjoy his far-looking review.
>>> To me it really hit the point.
>>>
>>> You can use it as you want or need.
>>>
>>> Hervé Le Crosnier
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -------- Message original --------
>>> Sujet: FYI France: review, "Word Matters", the InfoSociety
>>> Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 13:15:28 -0800 (PST)
>>> De: Jack Kessler <kessler en well.com>
>>> Pour: Jack Kessler <kessler en well.com>
>>>
>>>
>>> FYI France: a review, of "Word Matters / Enjeux de mots,
>>> regards multiculturels sur les sociétés de l'information"
>>> (Caen : éds. C&F, 2005) http://www.cfeditions.com
>>>
>>> A printed book intended for anyone interested in the "outside"
>>> (non-anglophone) digital information world... a world as-yet
>>> remarkably lacking in, or some might say "free of", the
>>> particular philosophy and bias and cant which permeate so much of
>>> the anglophone approach to all of this now...
>>>
>>> A text, moreover, presented in English & French & Spanish &
>>> Portuguese, evoking previous trans-national and multi-lingual
>>> eras: for instance the 16th century, back when the Biblia
>>> Políglota Complutense appeared in Latin & Hebrew & Greek...
>>>
>>> "Word Matters" offers texts written in conjunction with the World
>>> Summit on the Information Society (WSIS):
>>>
>>> http://www.itu.int/wsis/ (Geneva 2003, Tunis 2005)
>>>
>>> -- by people inspired by the WSIS effort, people who in turn have
>>> inspired the effort itself, a broad-ranging and remarkable group,
>>> representing a truly transnational approach.
>>>
>>> The basic idea, declare the principal three among the thirty-plus
>>> writers involved, is that,
>>>
>>> "'information' cannot be reduced to mere questions of
>>> infrastructures and techniques... it also raises
>>> important social issues..."
>>>
>>> -- and so, they say, they are interested in not a "world
>>> information summit" but in the human societies affected by, and
>>> to some extent resulting from, the new information technologies.
>>>
>>> Tensions already have developed, these authors say, between,
>>>
>>> "the international dominant position [which] holds that
>>> only deregulation of markets can guarantee the existence
>>> of the infrastructure necessary for universal access to
>>> the Information Society",
>>>
>>> -- and,
>>>
>>> "movements [which] are fighting to ensure that
>>> information remains above all a public good and [are]
>>> calling for regulation and public governance"
>>>
>>> Yet the situation is complex: complicated on the one hand by,
>>>
>>> "The decision by the most important power in the world to
>>> reject multilateralism and international democratization"
>>>
>>> -- but also on the other by,
>>>
>>> "Increasing collective fear, nurtured by world-wide
>>> terrorism and by talk of 'total security'... the choice
>>> of Tunisia as WSIS host -- that is of a country that does
>>> not allow free circulation of information -- constitutes
>>> a paradox which only can be explained by the current
>>> security context."
>>>
>>> So the book is interesting... Expecting a tract, in the
>>> simplistic "good vs. evil" battle now distressingly-familiar to
>>> readers of big media headlines, a reader here obtains instead a
>>> more balanced view, one rejecting simplicity and acknowledging
>>> complexity from the outset: it's a refreshing change, from the
>>> normal political hue and cry increasingly heard most places.
>>>
>>> The essays cover a broad range of subjects, from "Information
>>> Economy" to "Cybercrime", and from "Digital Libraries" to "Free
>>> Software". There are people here interested in "Virtual
>>> Communities", and others distressed by "Piracy". "Internet
>>> Governance" is of vital concern to some, while "Digital Divide"
>>> is more the central problem to others. "Gender", "Accessibility",
>>> and "Human Rights" all play central roles in our information
>>> societies going forward, various writers here point out.
>>>
>>> The contributors themselves are as interesting, and seem to be as
>>> varied, as the subjects they present: not normally the case, in
>>> the Western-engineering-dominated Internet and digital
>>> information discussions... One writer here is an English woman
>>> living in Ecuador, who has been active from there for 15 years in
>>> digital information networking. Another is a Sorbonne PhD
>>> currently working as legal advisor to the State Computer Agency
>>> in the Presidential Office in Sénégal.
>>>
>>> One writer has worked in information technologies in Brazil, for
>>> 25 years: on a project for that nation's Presidential Office, as
>>> coordinator of a national Free Software Project, and as professor
>>> at the Instituto Superior Tecnológico CEVATEC in Lima, and
>>> advisor to the Universidad Abierta de Cataluña. Another is in
>>> Denmark, where she co-founded an NGO, "Digital Rights", and
>>> serves on the board of another, "European Digital Rights (EDRI)".
>>> Another of these contributors is in Southeast Asia; still others
>>> are in India, the Congo and Ivory Coast, the Philippines, Québec.
>>>
>>> This sort of variety can guarantee, at the very least, variety
>>> itself: rarely would such a varied group share common concerns,
>>> or rank those concerns in similar ways. Among the social issues
>>> surrounding digital information, moreover, an additional problem
>>> arises: concepts which appear similar turn out not to be -- try
>>> "democracy", in any context -- and rankings of importance which
>>> look the same at first glance turn out not to be, in application,
>>> as any advocate of "Women's Rights" or "Citizen Expression" or
>>> "Education" discovers quickly, once on-the-ground in a foreign
>>> situation. There always is something "different", overseas.
>>>
>>> The more reason, then, why such a gathering of multinational and
>>> transnational outlook and experience is so valuable... "Word
>>> Matters", as the English version of the book's title suggests --
>>> that might have been rendered, too, "Words Matter" -- the
>>> approach taken is to find out not only what is important, about
>>> "information societies", to a greatly varied group of people, but
>>> also to examine very carefully _how_ they express their views --
>>>
>>> For the book is wonderfully multilingual. Each short essay
>>> appears in four languages, arranged uniformly in four columns
>>> across the two open pages: first in Portuguese, then English,
>>> then Spanish, finally in French. Unobtrusive markers, both on the
>>> pages and in the table of contents, indicate in which language
>>> the text originally was submitted.
>>>
>>> So a reader easily follows the language of her or his personal
>>> choice, vertically, scanning that column from top to bottom;
>>> while, for clarifying concepts and checking variations, the other
>>> three languages are available as well, alongside, in the
>>> neighboring three columns. The format is congenial: like
>>> "parallel texts" of poetry translations, offered by some
>>> publishers -- instead of the forbidding "multilingual" conference
>>> report format, done by some international agencies, which simply
>>> crams all language versions together sequentially, leaving it to
>>> readers to thumb back-and-forth among them if they must.
>>>
>>> The ideas expressed here are novel, as well. In his essay Hervé
>>> Le Crosnier observes, for example, that,
>>>
>>> "the role of libraries in preserving, conserving and
>>> making available documents is still fundamental. Unlike
>>> the technical illusion of a world of documents that is
>>> 'auto-organized', open to all and where information moves
>>> freely, tackling the issue using the experience of
>>> libraries as a starting-point enables us to imagine, on
>>> the contrary, a balance between technological innovation
>>> and social conditions..."
>>>
>>> -- and in hers Kemly Camacho asserts a need for,
>>>
>>> "Changing perspective so that technologies are at the
>>> service of societies..."
>>>
>>> -- while Dominique Cardon insists,
>>>
>>> "The citizen-user of new information and communications
>>> technologies has different characteristics from those of
>>> mass media consumers: the reader, the listener the TV
>>> viewer, etc...."
>>>
>>> -- and Adriana Lau adds,
>>>
>>> "Multilingualism Matters... Managing the translation
>>> phase has not been easy... we had to use email as the
>>> only form of communication. The original text for each
>>> article was immediately sent out to the team for
>>> translation... Once translated, the article was placed on
>>> the project's Internet site, allowing all authors to read
>>> it, and the process of debating the different concepts
>>> could begin... this book provided solid proof of the
>>> utility of new information technologies in today's society."
>>>
>>>
>>> The book is a useful and even necessary addition to any library
>>> of "Internet" and "Information" and "Globalization" materials: at
>>> least because it represents an outside point of view to what
>>> usually gets heard.
>>>
>>> It offers not so much an anti-Establishment point of view,
>>> however: there is plenty of material available elsewhere from
>>> that often narrow-minded quarter, most of it as ill-informed and
>>> filled with "philosophy and bias and cant" as the technical
>>> literature tends to be, on "social questions". No, this book is
>>> more the view of the real outsiders, of many of them anyway, who
>>> are as fascinated by the new technologies as anyone else is, but
>>> simply have some new questions, about "social applications" --
>>> questions not answered or even asked, in the anglophone world
>>> which largely has brought us "things digital" so far.
>>>
>>> Call this book not "anti-" but a broadening, then, of the
>>> Establishment point of view... It being a broad and complicated
>>> world, out there, one still relatively unpopulated with digital
>>> technique, it would make good sense to consider as many social
>>> and cultural points of view as possible -- as various digital
>>> vendors are finding out now, very expensively, in China and in
>>> Europe and elsewhere -- before taking the Globalization plunge.
>>>
>>>
>>> Note:
>>>
>>> If you happen to read international relations theory for fun --
>>> as I do, a weird highschool-age habit which for some reason I
>>> never outgrew -- you must have been struck with how dismal the
>>> stuff has become, recently. "Pre-emptive strike", "terrorism",
>>> "bird flu", "fundamentalism", "clash of civilizations"... and
>>> uncertainty, everywhere... the demise of the nation-state and its
>>> replacement with who-knows-what... Since the 1989 Fall of the
>>> Wall, and particularly since "9/11", the paradigm has shifted,
>>> the Old Order hath changed, and things have fallen apart while
>>> the centre truly cannot hold -- if not in reality at least in
>>> international relations theory. "We see through a glass, darkly"
>>> as never before, it seems.
>>>
>>> So it is refreshing to read the essays described above. They are,
>>> for the most part anyway, enticingly upbeat, and forward-looking,
>>> and even optimistic. They concern some of the Great Issues
>>> addressed by the Establishment punditry: "Internet Governance",
>>> "Cultural Diversity", "Gender", "Digital Divide", "Intellectual
>>> Property", "Cybercrime". But unlike mainstream media, which tends
>>> nowadays to focus on the negative -- on the sensational, and
>>> nearly all of that catastrophic -- hurricanes and nuclear war and
>>> terrorism and whatever else -- there _are_ some people left on
>>> the planet, apparently, who still see some possibilities.
>>>
>>> These people aren't the "counter-culture": that's just the folks
>>> opposed to the mainstream, the "anti's". As gloomy a bunch as the
>>> Establishment folks, the "anti-" folks are, products of the same
>>> simplistic Manichean thinking: anti-Development, anti-Growth,
>>> anti-this, anti-that, particularly anti-Globalization. Those of
>>> us who are fans of Globalization, as well as those of us who are
>>> foes, tend to ignore how powerless we all are, really. The world
>>> is Globalizing, inexorably and inevitably, simply because it's
>>> grown smaller. The point is how best to Globalize, not whether to.
>>>
>>> So that last is the refreshing take, of most of the writers in
>>> this book. Not a Third Way -- that over-used and somewhat
>>> betrayed term -- but a New Way, perhaps. Amid all the gloom and
>>> doom in panic-stricken nation-state capitals, nowadays, Something
>>> Completely Different may be exactly what we all need.
>>>
>>>
>>> --oOo--
>>>
>>>
>>> FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071-5916
>>>
>>> *
>>> | FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic
>>> | journal published since 1992 as a small-scale,
>>> | personal experiment, in the creation of large-
>>> | scale "information overload", by Jack Kessler.
>>> / \ Any material written by me which appears in
>>> ----- FYI France may be copied and used by anyone for
>>> // \\ any good purpose, so long as, a) they give me
>>> --------- credit and show my email address, and, b) it
>>> // \\ isn't going to make them money: if it is going
>>> to make them money, they must get my permission
>>> in advance, and share some of the money which they get with me.
>>> Use of material written by others requires their permission.
>>> FYI France archives may be found at http://infolib.berkeley.edu
>>> (search fyifrance), or http://www.cru.fr/listes/biblio-fr@cru.fr/
>>> (BIBLIO-FR archive), or http://listserv.uh.edu/archives/pacs-l.html
>>> (PACS-L archive) or http://www.fyifrance.com . Suggestions,
>>> reactions, criticisms, praise, and poison-pen letters all will be
>>> gratefully received at kessler en well.sf.ca.us .
>>>
>>> Copyright 1992- , by Jack Kessler,
>>> all rights reserved except as indicated above.
>>>
>>> --hjlm--
>>
Salut
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Luis Angel Fernández Hermana
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
http://lafh.info
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Tel.: +34 630 02 25 26
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Salut
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Luis Angel Fernández Hermana
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
http://lafh.info
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Tel.: +34 630 02 25 26
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Más información sobre la lista de distribución Ciutat