Right on, Charles! The name of the game is just...MARKETING! Preferably worldwide, through all those "insidious" "aid" things. Nothing else but modern Trojan horses mantled in "charity" sentiments, whose main and true aim is just to conquer new markets. Never mind local creativity, indigenous and endogenous development hampered by all those subtle but ruthless impositions! Francois Nsenga Teacher and Researcher in Industrial Design, Ergonpomics and Sociology Montreal, CANADA P.S. Thanks for the bibliography list! Original Message: ----------------- From: Charles Ess cmess@drury.edu Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 06:35:56 +0200 To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] help on africa and computer donations In my view, this student is on the right track - but still short of a series of additional questions that I believe need to be taken into consideration. As briefly as I can: because these technologies embed and foster the cultural values and communicative preferences of their designers - whatever the good intentions of such projects, they run the very real risk of serving as a form of computer-mediated colonization. This colonization is all the more insidious because it is more subtle than gunboats or even smallpox-infected blankets - but the format is the same: a form of cultural imperialism towards "the Other" issuing from a naïve ethnocentrism that presumes that "our" ways of doing things, including communicating and the technologies that support communication, are universal. Those who do things differently are simply wrong, primitive, etc., and must simply learn to do things our way. Worst-case scenario: "wiring the world" in the name of democracy, freedom of expression, economic development, etc. becomes simply a high-tech way of obliterating the differences that define individual and cultural identity. The literature affiliated with the CATaC (Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication) conferences is chock-full of case-studies from around the world that demonstrate (a) many such projects fail - and sometimes fail disastrously - because designers and sponsors, to put it bluntly, are clueless about the cultural dimensions of what they're up to. This happens in spectacular ways with projects oriented towards indigenous peoples, for example (the South African Learning Centres are a primary example) - but similar results often crop up when crossing into Confucian-shaped societies in particular and more communitarian-oriented societies in general. (Crudely, ICTs have a built-in bias towards the individual - a bias that can foster behavior contrary to the prevailing cultural norms in such societies.) (b) such projects can succeed marvelously - but only by taking into account the cultural and communicative dimensions at work "from the ground up," i.e., by design and implementation processes that start with the clearest possible understanding of the cultural values and communicative preferences of the peoples, organizations, etc., to be involved. The literature here is extensive - much of it online, e.g. in special issues of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, as well as in more traditional print-based journals and a few books: Emma Rooksby & John Weckert (eds.) 2007. Information Technology and Social Justice. Hershey, PA: Idea Publishing Sri Kurniawan & Panayiotis Zaphiris (eds.). 2007. Advances in Universal Web Design and Evaluation Laurel Evelyn Dyson, Max Hendriks & Stephen Grant (eds.) 2007. Information Technology and Indigenous People. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing. C. Ess, Akira Kawabata, and Hiroyuki Kurosaki (eds.), "Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Religion and Computer-Mediated Communication," Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (3), April, 2007. <http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue3/ess.html> C. Ess. 2006. Du colonialisme informatique à un usage culturellement informé des TIC. In J. Aden (ed.), De Babel à la mondialisation: apport des sciences sociales à la didactique des langues. Dijon : CNDP - CRDP de Bourgogne, p. 47-61. C. Ess and F. Sudweeks (eds.), Culture and CMC: Toward New Understandings - special issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11 (1) (October 2005) <http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/> C. Ess and F. Sudweeks (eds.), Technology of Despair and Hope: CMC in the Middle East - a special issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (November 2003) <http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol8/issue2/> Jonathan Zhu, Fay Sudweeks, and C Ess (eds.), Internet Adoption in the Asia-Pacific Region, special issue of Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 7: 2 (January, 2002). <http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol7/issue2/> C. Ess (ed.). 2001. Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an Intercultural Global Village. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. On the South African Learning Centres: Postma, L. (2001). A theoretical argumentation and evaluation of South African learners¹ orientation towards and perceptions of the empowering use of information. New Media and Society, 3(3: September), 315-28. Snyman, M., & Hulbert, D. (2004). Implementing ICT Centres for Development in South Africa: Can cultural differences be overcome?² In F. Sudweeks & C. Ess (Eds.), Proceedings Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication (pp. 626-630). Murdoch, Western Australia: Murdoch University Hope that helps! - charles ess

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Hello,

I am Alok Kotecha, a Computer Science major at the College of Charleston. I am working on a paper for my English 102 class that is based mainly on donating computers to the developing nations of Africa, mostly Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mozambique & Zambia.

My main argument is that developed nations donate technology such as computers to these counties with the aim of technologically advancing the nations, however they do not consider the fact that donating computers is not the main thing to be done at this stage.

Below are some other arguments that I address in my paper:

1. Lack of infrastructure e.g. very few people have telephone lines and this will stop them from connecting to the internet. (Wireless connections are out of question in most places due to the high set up costs and regular maintenance required.)

2. Security would be a concern - High crime rates might mean that high security would be needed in order to protect computers from theft.

3. Language would be a concern as well - Operating a computer that interacts in English my be a problem for many people.

4. Health Care - Many people die everyday form malaria and other diseases. In these cases it is always a good idea to save lives first by providing better health care and medical services rather then donating computers.

Currently I have based my paper on statistics from UNDP and NYT articles, but because this is a very recent issue I am currently having problems finding more scholarly articles and I would appreciate any suggestions you can provide.

Thank you,

Alok Kotecha

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