The Information Society and the Nature of Digital Divide

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Ok. Click here - http://www.yourlanguage.yourlocale – Are you connected? As rudimentary as this example is, it’s a very complicated business. The inaugural meeting of the IGF or Internet Governance Forum held in Athens, Greece has come to an end and the abundance of information made available at the IGF website is proof of just how complex and increasingly expansive the future of the internet could be. Fittingly the IGF held a 4 day interactive discussion on various themes including openness, diversity, access and multilingualism, highlighting concerns for minority and indigenous rights.

“Some 90 per cent of the 6,000 languages in use worldwide are not in use on the internet and many people are cut off from the Net simply because content is not available in their mother tongues”, the Spokesman for the Secretary General stated in a press briefing at the United Nations. And at the IGF meeting in Greece, Chairman Vassilis Maglaris, a professor at the National Technical University of Athens said, "There are, at this point, about one billion worldwide users of the Internet out of six billion worldwide population. That makes it one out of six citizens and people in the world being connected to the Internet." Many contributions to the IGF discussion came from developing countries, reminding attendees that despite the rapid spread of the Internet, five billion people remained without access to the Internet, economic growth and social development. Participants in the discussion were reminded that access could therefore be the single most important issue to most people, in particular in developing countries, as stated in an extensive line of transcripts on the IGF website: www.intgovforum.org .

The need to maintain an open Internet was discussed, revealing a consensus among participants around the importance of openness as a necessary condition for sustainable development. Keen focus was given to the rights of “minority groups and indigenous peoples” with regards to access and protection of their cultural heritage - access to the internet being considered vital to human rights. There were plenty of references made as to the role of the “free flow” of information, described by some attendees as a "mechanism" for sustaining development, as well as inhibiting the "brain drain” from poorer to richer countries. The “openness” session focused on the bifurcation of information into two interdependent themes, one being the free flow and freedom of information and the other access to information and knowledge. It was pointed out that for developing countries, issues such as better access to the Internet and empowering people with information and knowledge is a priority and a critical objective of an inclusive Information Society, as noted in the session on “openness.”

In the session on diversity, the issue of multilingualism, as relates to its practicality in the DNS (Domain Name System) arena was discussed. Interested readers will know that by now there are almost one billion people using the internet; however, it was stressed that many could not read or write in English and use languages that do not use the Latin alphabet. Often the indigenous languages are not written languages, so for indigenous people to gain access needed, unconventional solutions would be needed from a software and hardware point of use.

Some core elements found listed on the website are management of the DNS and various ways to turn it into a system that allows multilingual use, issues surrounding Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), recognition that as technical solutions for a more localized multilingualism are found, global interoperability will become more complex and difficult to guarantee. Once again, highlighting the indigenous issue, it was noted that the lack of access to the Internet in indigenous languages was detrimental to many potential and existing users and that these detrimental effects were typically most commonly felt in developing countries.

In the section covering the institutional aspects, several factors that conditioned the availability and affordability of the Internet were the appropriate regulatory environment (possibly at the national level) and international connectivity prices and costs. The National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Egypt argued that in emerging markets, such as Egypt, the creation and development of an Information Society was not a task carried out by a single entity, rather it was a national task carried out by multiple agencies, public private partnerships, community initiatives and cooperation between all the stakeholders.

Along with the discussion of a “multi-stakeholder” approach to the process of Internet Governance, an “Internet Bill of Rights” was proposed adding that such a bill of rights could build on the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society held in Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005) principles. One proposal called for developing a ”UN Framework Convention” as a way to deal with internet governance and thereby grounding it in International Law.

Overall, a notably inclusive perspective was held by the attendees who generally recognized that “everybody should be able to use the internet in their own language”, and “a multilingual internet would foster an inclusive, democratic, legitimate, respectful, and locally empowering Information Society.”

Information in this report was compiled from the Internet Governance Forum website. For a more in-depth understanding of the issues and themes put forward at the meeting please go to http://www.intgovforum.org

Elisa Burchett
U.N. OBSERVER & International Report


Source:http://www.unobserver.com/layout5.php?id=2802&blz=1