For this week's prompt please read the following speech presented by Al Gore:
http://w2.eff.org/Infrastructure/Govt_docs/gii_gore_buenos_aires.speech
Please review your initial reactions about the speech. Do you think he has a valid point? Is it realistic or too rosy? How do you feel about our progress as a globe knowing this speech was delivered almost 15 years ago? Do you think that social networking helps or hinders a "global information infrastructure?"
If this concept interests you, feel free to find out more information at:
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_8/borgman/#b12
Do note this is probably the only reading I will assign all semester. Although it may seem long it really isn't. It is a speech. Please spend the 20 minutes reading it and reflecting upon it as we will be discussing your reactions in class.
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5 comments:
Overall, Al Gore spoke about a great idea for the nations of the world, but I believe the plan as a whole was too rosy. 15 years later, we still haven't accomplished half the things he spoke about.
"Our fourth principle is open access. By this I mean that telephone and
video network owners should charge non-discriminatory prices for access
to their networks. This principle will guarantee every user of the GII
can use thousands of different sources of information--video
programming, electronic newspapers, computer bulletin boards--from
every country, in every language."
This fourth principle is something that lobbyists for telecommunication companies are arguing against to this day. For more information on this, check out savetheinternet.com. Also, as a globe we have failed because to this day, we are restricted to other countries networks. At the same time though, we have made progress. For example, on YouTube.com, you can select at the top certain country's videos to filter. As far as open access, we have improved some over the last 15 years, but not as much as I would like to have seen.
Another line that caught my eye in his speech was, "
The President and I have called for positive government action in the
United States to extend the NII to every classroom, library, hospital,
and clinic in the U.S. by the end of the century."
I know for a fact that the NII is not in every classroom.
In my opinion, social networking at the very least does not hinder a GII and I would argue, even helps a GII. Social networking allows us to bridge and bond connections across the world to develop both weak and strong ties. Although this may not contribute directly to connecting networks worldwide, it develops relationships and a beginning to connect these networks. Also, social networking may even be considered connecting networks worldwide.
Idealistically speaking the concepts that Al Gore speaks about would be very nice, but I don't think we will reach the point were we are as connected as described. As someone said in class it is kind of like communism: the idea is very nice, but realistically it is not going to happen. One thing he did mention is that ideally there would be a network of all library resources, so if you ever needed to find a book you could find out where it is anywhere in the world. To a lesser extent this has become possible over the past years as more and more libraries have been putting their book catalogue online. I think that potentially something like this could be really helpful and a great way to find people with common interests. There are currently lots of social networking websites that do help people meet other people, but you can not meet anyone from anywhere in the world. In order for the plans that Al Gore describes to work it will take a lot of money to be spent on bringing technology to developing countries. With the current economy it is a set back to brining that technology to developing countries because people rather spend money to bring food and other basic necessities to these countries than technology. Which i think make sense. It will be a long time before everyone can have the technology to connect because there are many other problems that people need to spend money on instead of technology.
This made me laugh when I read is becasue alot of what he said was true and did happen. Some things like making jobs I feel those in politics say because it one of those word that people want to hear. but the rest was very true. Alot of changes in the way we communicate are becasue of the internet. but one thing that he didnt say was how much ad's are on line, and all the scames that steal people identiy. But it has help alot of people that arenot able to leave thier homes do so.
I think the concepts presented in the speech are a bit too idealistic. However the principles behind what he wants are solid and those are worthy goals. We are making strides towards some of the goals he set up but I doubt we will ever reach some of his real lofty goals. I feel the internet has helped to increase the wealth and accessibility of information to everyone. While sources such as Wikipedia are not truly academic sources. They are really good sources of relatively accurate and general information about a topic. It gives a reader a good introduction to the topic and if they are interested they can research it more in depth. Not everyone wants to go look at academic papers if they're curious about a topic, places like wikipedia help those people at least get some information about the topic.
I echo what has been said about the speech. Gore was sort of obligated to play politician to avoid the negatives behind the internet. I do not know if he knew the negatives that may result from the internet though. This assumption that all internet users will "play nice" make me question if Gore knew of the potential for the internet pornography industry, illegal music downloading, and viruses.
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