Re: [Air-l] ATTN: Race, Place, and Information Technology
There has been little or no apparent rejection, as far as I can tell, of the Internet as a "white man's technology", as extraneous and irrelevant to local cultural life, or as an overpriced commodity imported from abroad (and that it definitely is).
And why should there be? The problem with the normal interrogation of this issue is that there is a failure to recognize that while the physical technology may have been developed elsewhere, the concepts which undergird it's use and operation are often indigenous. If anything, the real "white man's" technology is anything that is based on unidirectional broadcast and private property ownership (broadcast television, etc.), as opposed to the multidirectional and communal tendencies of the internet and other forms of online communication. The internet comes closer than any other "outside" form to what non-white people would create if given a choice. The barriers they face in acquiring the physical tools to participate says nothing about how the idea of the internet resonates with many of their cultural values. So, if there is a digital divide, it's brought about not by lack of interest, laziness, nihilism, or apathy, but by economic and institutional barriers to getting at the means of production and consumption.
This of course speaks to the particularities of Trinidad, and I would not expect similar findings in all parts of whatever one may call it, the Third World, the lesser developed countries, ex-colonies, etc., etc.
There is nothing surprising to me about the Trinidadian situation, and in reading the research it in many ways mirrored my perceptions and personal experience as a Black person here in the United States. Obviously there are many objective differences, but there is a Pan-African thread, however thin it may be, that ties them together. Art McGee Principal Consultant Virtual Identity Communications+Media+Technology 1-510-967-9381 Copyrights and Copywrongs <http://nytimes.com/imagepages/2003/09/16/arts/20030916_POPLIFE_IMAGE.html>
Thanks Art, There are a lot of very interesting points that you raised in your message. I had really not thought in these terms before:
The problem with the normal interrogation of this issue is that there is a failure to recognize that while the physical technology may have been developed elsewhere, the concepts which undergird it's use and operation are often indigenous.
What I had especially failed to consider are some of the cultural implications of the operation of the technology itself, not a minor oversight either. It also seems that once access has been established, any apparent centre-periphery distinctions generally at work in the world system seem to fade away, in that it is hard to establish the operation of a centre and periphery within the world wide web itself in any kind of direct and cut and dry sense. Indeed, large holes can be blown through the centre's technological apparatus, and yet in Trinidad the Internet seemed to function as normal (i.e., during 9-11, the recent blackout, and I recall an incident involving some fire in a tunnel in New Jersey that derstroyed some supposedly critical lines)...but then again, it's not like Internet service in Trinidad was ever really fast and smooth for the average user. Cheers, Max. Dr. Maximilian C. Forte Assistant Professor Dept. of Anthropology and Sociology University College of Cape Breton 1250 Grand Lake Road P.O. Box 5300 Sydney, NS B1P-6L2, Canada E-mail: max_forte@uccb.ca Faculty Web page: http://faculty.uccb.ns.ca/mforte/ Office B.273 Telephone: 902-563-1947
participants (2)
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Art McGee -
Maximilian C. Forte