K. Dixit

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IT and Knowledge
Information Devolution

Kunda Dixit: Nominating Expert Net Vision/Net Excellence

In the countries of the South most of the people are out of the information loop. What is the real reason in your opinion? What does it need in your opinion to bring them into the loop? It seems that information and IT are not fulfilling their promises.

Dixit: You know, people keep talking about the 'digital divide' as if they just discovered something new. Actually, we've had a school divide, a hospital divide, an economic divide for centuries. The reason people in the South are out of the information loop is because our schools lack roofs, classrooms don't have electricity, there are no text books and even if there are, the kids can't afford them. So let's do first things first.

In at text you once said: 'Information Technology is like a tiger. You can either ride it or be eaten up by it. You may be eaten up anyway, but at least you get to ride it for a while.' What does it mean for the countries of the South?

Dixit: Actually it was Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad who used the tiger analogy when he was speaking about economic globalisation. But it fits pretty neatly with IT as well. The information age has redefined literacy. If you want to be competitive in the globalised world, the economies of countries in the south have to be information savvy, they need to be IT investment-friendly, and young people need a different kind of education. How well we do this will mean whether or not we are able to take full advantage of the new technology. If we become Luddites, then we will miss the bus on the information age just as we did on the industrial age.

The Internet and so-called globalization have the same technological roots, but it seems they developed in opposite directions. The Internet has the potential for community building, bridging the gap, to foster democracy etc. Globalization seems to do the contrary, to reinforce the contradictions between North and South, between the haves and the have-nots. Do you see any way to think a 'new globalization' which can 'make the world better'? Do we have to rethink the role of the Internet, too, in this context?

Dixit: That is already happening. The Internet is creating new solidarities between the North and South and between people of the south. By giving access to cheap and instant communication, they can now learn much more from each other and resist the negative effects of economic globalisation. The trouble is that the other side is much more efficient in using this technology. And the commercialisation of the Internet is also putting it out of the reach of people who could formerly afford it.

At Prix Ars Electronica you are nominating expert in the subfield 'campaigning, digital divide.' What special quality must have a site so that you will suggest it to the Jury?

Dixit: There are two key criteria to make information technology more useful in the south: accessibility and affordability. Accessibility is linked to infrastructure, bandwidth, language, etc. Affordability has to do with all this being within the budget of the end-user. Any entrant that addresses these two issues with creativity and originality wins my vote.

I am also concerned about activism that is too strident and polemical. Many of us think that waving the flag and having a cause is enough. It's not. It's not what we say, but how we say it that makes what we say more persuasive. Remember: we are not preaching to the already-converted.




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