Wednesday: 14.January.2004

Another Perspective

I loathe mailing lists. They're easy to get on & difficult (or impossible) to get off. Well-meaning friends include me on their massive Joke-of-the-Day mailings and other such nonsense. Next thing you know, one of the recipients adds me to their own mailing list. And so on & so forth.

Now, people who I have never met are sending me daily emails containing their political tirades. Netiquette dictates that names on a mailing list (other than close family & friends) go into the blind copy (bcc) box .. to protect the privacy of those on the list.

I use several different email addys, and have to change them periodically due to spam and similar nuisances. I only subscribe to two mailing lists (both free):

• Merriam-Webster Word-of-the-Day to help build my fledgling vocabulary (daily)
Le Monde diplomatique, a French-based political news letter (monthly)

I think it's important for us here in the States to be exposed to political insights from abroad. Not that we would agree with everything we read there, but to get another perspective. It's like looking at yourself in a mirror. Sometimes you can see yourself more clearly if you take a step away from yourself. It's not like we can dictate what the media here feeds us.

Speaking of Le Monde, they recently published an interesting document titled Gaps in the Net. It mentions how, last month, the *first* world summit on Information Society was held in Geneva, at the request of the United Nations.

I prefer a French-based perspective because the French are known to be arrogant, and tend to speak their minds in a direct manner. They don't mince words, and I appreciate that. Less BS to wade thru. Some quotes from the article:

The internet became available to the public only a decade ago. In that short time, it has revolutionised political, economic, social and cultural life to such an extent that we can now reasonably speak of a new internet world order in telecommunications. Nothing is as it was before.

But this remarkable transformation has largely been to the advantage of Western countries, already the beneficiaries of previous industrial revolutions. It is now exacerbating the digital gap between those who have an abundance of information technologies and the many more who have none. Two figures give a sense of the inequality: 91% of the world’s users of the internet are drawn from only 19% of the world’s population.





Posted by Rad at January 14, 2004 02:44 AM

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Posted by:
Melvin at January 22, 2004 11:31 PM