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The 3rd Global Knowledge Conference (GK3) – one of the most important knowledge sharing and creative development conferences in the world – will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from 11 -13 December 2007. Themed "Emerging People, Emerging Markets, Emerging Technologies," GK3 promises to be a dynamic event focused on the future. GK3 will explore concrete solutions and possibilities within the inter-play, interface and interweaving of issues related to the Knowledge for Development (K4D) and Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) in the context of our globally evolving societies, economies and technologies worldwide.
For AMARC, network activities in Kuala Lumpur will focus on how women can use knowledge sharing in their community radio programming activities to empower other women so they can play a stronger role in good governance and democracy. This is one of AMARC’s most important theme areas for development in 2007.
Ashok Jhunjhunwala, head of the Telecom and Networks Group (TeNeT) at the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai, [...] says that the dozens of ICT projects across the country are a series of ongoing experiments, “some of which have worked”, he says, but “most of which haven't”.
“You'll hear about a village where ICTs have helped farmers get a better price for grain, or a village where someone has got better access to health care, but these are all anecdotal cases and don't represent the majority of ICT projects,” says Jhunjhunwala.
I just found out about this from my friend Ambar. Apparently we also have a TV turnoff time in Indonesia. And it's been going on at least since 2006.
It's that time of the year again. OK, so maybe we would dare turn off our TV. But what about our DVD player, video iPod, XBOX 360, laptop, or PSP? All for seven days of unplugged life?But there’s a lot more to TV Turnoff Week than shaking up your relationship with passive entertainment. It’s all about saying no to being bombarded with unwelcome and unhealthy commercial messages. It's about saying no to unfettered corporate media concentration and to the democratic deficit that results. And it's about challenging the heavily distorted reflection of the world that we see on the screen, a reflection that is keeping us ill-informed and unaware of the very real political and environmental crises that we all currently face.The decision is up to you. But please do reflect on the topic.
Communication in the earthquake-affected area is down. Moreover, the mountainous geographic condition in this area makes it difficult to disseminate information. Radio is the most effective means.Hendri's contact information is available here.
Kompas (in Indonesian language) has some encouraging articles to start off the week. For one, the cost of narrowing the (urban-rural) digital divide is heading down with the new Base Transceiver Station (BTS) technology called FLASH OFDM (Fast-hopping Low-latency Access with Seamless Handover Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing).
OFDM technology operates at 450 MHz frequency, can accommodate bandwidth of up 5.3 Mbps, can reach a distance of up to 70 kilometers. Much more efficient as we'd need less BTS to connect more areas. Best of all, OFDM can be integrated with GSM networks using a mini, very portable, "nanoGSM" BTS that is of paper size and of 2.7 Kg weight. Imagine that: carrying your own BTS around that can serve both voice and data.
We don't know when this technology (currently developed by Siemens) will be available. Hopefully soon. Still, a major problem in popularizing the internet in
In another article, the daily profiled an inspiring role of community radio in helping the post-disaster (tsunami) recovery of Pangandaran coastal area,
Now the local teachers' association (PGRI) has been collaborating to provide distance education through radio waves. A show called "free talk," where community members and local leaders alike can participate, discusses local development issues, from regularization of informal traders to issues of internally displaced people.
Now, wouldn't it be cool if we can see some kind of collaboration between a technology like OFDM and community radios?
So the poor kids' gadget to bridge the digital divide will be available in developing countries this month! Newsweek has a cool interview with Negroponte about it recently, calling it "the people's laptop". OK, so the price is still $150 - but the MIT guru said he'll work it down to $100.
This new license allows creators to make their works available for attributed free distribution (copies can be freely shared, providing the original creator is credited) in the Global South, while still retaining all copyright control in the Global North.Here's another good quote:
We're trying to hack the copyright system, in the programmers sense of hack. Not to break it but make it function in ways it wasn't intended to work. That's not because we're opposed to copyright, but because we're opposed to copyright functioning in ways that don't benefit either the author or the end user. Copyright is meant to be a tool to promote inventionSo why oh why does a gap still lie between the nerds and the activists?
mobile phones will be the prime means of accessing the web for users in developing countries.Links are from varnelis.net. Apophenia further explains what she means by "email is dead"
The 9th World Conference and General Assembly of community radio broadcasters (AMARC 9)is coming up on November 11th. Combine is sending 2 people there.Radio specialists are dismayed that the global meeting has overlooked the vital role of community radio in empowering people and strengthening democracy in many regions, including, conflict places.id21 insights stands by AMARC and says that community radios provide "voices for change."
While much of the debate focuses on the Internet, many planners and practitioners have begun to realise that it is to traditional media, such as radio, that poor people are most likely to turn for access to information and voice.
technorati tags: ICT-for-development, community-radio, AMARC
Farmers in some of the country’s least developed provinces now have instant access to pricing and market information through a new telecenter initiative developed by the agriculture ministry, Intel and UNDP.The Economist, on the other hand, was more interested in mobile phones, both on political issues,
Chroniclers of cellular people power identify two big landmarks: the rallies that toppled President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines in 2001, and South Korea's presidential election a year later, when text messages among the young brought a surge of support for President Roh Moo-hyun.and economic issues:
About half a million South Africans now use their mobile phones as a bank. Besides sending money to relatives and paying for goods, they can check balances, buy mobile airtime and settle utility bills. Traditional banks offer mobile banking as an added service to existing customers, most of whom are quite well off. But [some banks] are chasing another market: the 16m South Africans, over half of the adult population, with no bank account. Significantly, 30% of these people do have mobile phones.The Office of Data and Information in Sinjai, South Sulawesi, on the other hand, is more interested in the power of interactive radio broadcasting.
By facilitating a two-way information flow, the head of the office, Andi Grandyanto Asapa, enables checks and balances between the people and the government.
One hype/rhetoric in the field of "ICT for Development" is that price information, in the hands of poor producers, can help such producers gain leverage in dealing with middlemen. This is maybe true, but then again too many "ICT for Development" initiatives are so focused on the Internet, they forget the simple things that actually work: real-time voice communication.With 6 million new cellphone subscribers each month, industry analysts predict that in four years nearly half of India's 1.1 billion people will be connected by cellphone.And dirt cheap:
less than a penny a minute -- the world's cheapest cellphone call rates
technorati tags: ICT-for-development
I'd love to see many more Indonesian bloggers blog in English, the most-widely-understood world language. So that the world knows and understands more about Indonesia by reading anything written by Blogger Indonesia.Back in 2001, when I was so excited about the "bridging the digital divide" movement, my friend, Kang Didi, adjusted my perspective by saying this:
The most frightening aspect of the digital divide is not that the poor won’t get information, but that the poor won’t be able to contribute the making of mainstream knowledges, that they will be stuck as knowledge consumers, never producers, and that one day their local knowledges and wisdoms will disappear.Back in those days, blogs were not so far developed. For the average people to get their message across in the Internet, they'd have to learn HTML. Then they'd have to learn tricks on how to get their website found in search engines. Today, blogs make the "bottom-up information" movement more easier and accessible. One does not have to learn HTML. Machines built into blog providers, also tools such as technorati and del.icio.us, make blogs easy to find. Audience has also widened by people being more critical of mainstream media. A good example of the "bottom-up information" movement is Global Voices, for which Fatih and my friend, Enda, are contributors.
Yes, they trained me to use the Internet. I wanted to find information about better technologies for farming chilly. I found it. But it's a 20-page report! After reading the first 2 pages, I gave up. I didn't understand the language. It's too technical.The Government has tried to deal with this by making the Warintek CD-ROMs: a compilation of Indonesian local, practical knowledges. The Pe-PP project is using the role of "infomobilizers" (community organizers with an ICT perspective), so that by way of information found over the Internet and direct facilitation (meaning contextualization and translation into "the people's language"), a farmer group in Muneng, Madiun, was enabled to grow better, bigger melons and find the buyers. That's why, as much as I agree with Fatih about people blogging in English, I'd also suggest people to blog in plain, simple Bahasa Indonesia. Or any traditional language.
January Joiner:Similar to Wikipedia, Urban Dictionary allows people to collectively shape the world from THEIR perspective, based on THEIR understanding, not the expert's, not the few elite's.
Someone who joins the gym in January as part of a New Year's resolution and by February is back to being a couch potato.
ho ho ho:
Santa's cry, or three prostitutes.
this is one of unwritten conventional rule in blogger world: whenever someone link your blog, you're obliged to link it back.Since when is blogging full of "rules" and "obligations"? Conventions, maybe. Consider this: saying "thank you" is not common in many Indonesian villages (unless you actually give them something), but we'd more likely get a smile or a nod instead. Or, my Japanese friend told me that there is no "please" in Japanese language. Or, I had a hard time finding the Javanese expression for "excuse me."
People say, welcome to the era of narcisism. This saying refers to blogs and their increasing quantity and popularity.Fatih is acknowledging this just fine, by saying
Indonesian bloggers tend to make their blogs and their names known in the google world and are proud to see their traffic achieves PG (page ranking) four plus. ...
I hardly found any Indonesian bloggers whose pictures, true full names and CVs are not attached in their blogs.And this:
blogger is an ego-driven medium, a self-publishing means and a self-satisfying "lust" of own-self existence. Let's be honest about it.I agree, to a certain extent. But I think your statements may be pushing it too far (they don't apply to everyone). And some bloggers may NOT like to hear that blogging is identical with narcisism.
1. a work cannot possibly have been made in void and thus better understanding can derive from understanding and knowledge of the background of the very person behind the work itself.Let me ask Fatih: If you knew beforehand that a post is written by an anonymous foreign blogger, then would you view it "differently" than a post written in the same tone by an open-identity Indonesian?
2. the work itself should be the main focus of attention. Once a work is released to public domain, it thus becomes public and its interpretation therefore rests with the eyes of each beholder.
