***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
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   [Date]: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 11:40:16 -0600
   [From]: Juan JosŽ D’az Infante <jdiazinfante@altamiracave.com>
     [To]: Cultural Exchange via Internet <forum1@hkw.kbx.de>
[Subject]: Re: [forum1] Re: Access


Hi, Dianne, Ami, all

I agree with Dianne's comments, Television, Internet, radio and telephone will have the tendency in the future to become one big media portal.

There are two major problems,

in Mexico, Argentina and India you wont be able to see much of the content
produced in the first world due to connection problems (37 tube connections
from Mexico to Argentina). This is happening today with the electronic
magazine published by Mecad (Barcelona) in Spanish for the Latin American
audience, there is no technology to see it (bandwidth).

Alvin Toffler was here (Mexico) a few months ago, his comments, "low wages
will yield more people buying TV sets than computers..."

Reality Check
For a moment let us think that connection was possible:

As soon as you move an important mass of people into Internet the
advertisers will move accordingly. Let=B4s realize that the shift will be
completely into entertainment.

Television is a media about itself, internet has done that now for 5 years.
There is an excitement about some numbers and statistics that very few
people can really understand (even traditional communications are hard to
understand). The market of internet as per 1 year ago was 95% on products
regarding internet itself, meaning manuals, connection, software, etc.

New technologies do not solve old problems.

For another moment let us think that advertisers and the entertainment does
not move as fast as they would

Give everyone access to internet is to assume that they would use it...

I was involved as a consultant into setting a program to install Internet
for 129,000 schools in Mexico. The main problem: Culture:   The principal
would lock the computer so nobody would steal it.  Let's assume again we
work this problem out.

There was no important mass of content in Spanish and the students did not
know English. Once I got to this point and I pointed out the need to realize
that an educational program had to do with content and not hardware or
technology, it became impossible to explain to an engineer (the head of the
program) that he had to sacrifice a couple of towers, three transponders in
order to pay writers. Science has abused plenty in underestimating Art.

We are talking at this point of basic education, not necessarily art.
Indifference is the weapon that kills.

To think that art competes against TV is a futile exercise because both
belong to different people. It is the culture to extract what is useful what
is necessary. The culture to do change and work from from within the system,
defining precisely the problem, objective and strategy.I wish there were
such an easy solution as Internet to solve the problems of the world.

Juan

"Es m‡s importante la Imaginaci—n que el conocimiento"
Albert Einstein

Juan JosŽ D’az Infante
www.altamiracave.com
jdiazinfante@altamiracave.com
Tel (525) 5687575
Fx (525) 5684451
Cel 1914558
Crest—n 192
MŽxico DF 01900 Mexico