***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
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   [Date]: Thu, 09 Dec 1999 17:40:01 +0100
   [From]: Pat Binder <pat@uinic.de>
     [To]: forum1@hkw.kbx.de
[Subject]: Olu Oguibe: "Connectivity, and the Fate of the Unconnected"

Dear members of the list,

I would strongly recommend Olu Oguibe's excellent article "Connectivity,
and the Fate of the Unconnected" , published two days ago in the German
on-line magazine telepolis.

English
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/special/med/6547/1.html

German
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/6551/1.html


Most of  the issues he raises in his text, are of great relevance to the
main focus we were trying to give to our forum. For instance when he
asks:

"... Given the relative ease with which participants in the network can
generate and disseminate information, sometimes on a bewilderingly vast
scale, has this medium entrusted some of us with the power to fabricate
and disseminate possibly fictive and potentially injurious constructs
and narratives of the Other to the rest of the world, when such
populations have no equally enabling devices to encounter, evaluate,
critique, challenge or seek to invalidate images and representations of
their selves and their state of being? If the Net empowers us to possess
the voice or invent the narrative of the absent, does it not by so doing
also enable us, to scar his body?"

I admire Oguibe's self-critical voice here. 

And further, he questions:

"...Might it (the net) not preclude proper and meaningful contact and
exchange, by encouraging the false notion that we know the Other and
that the Other is in fact part of the new global community that we take
for granted? Might it not impede rather than facilitate our reach for
genuine interaction across social and cultural divides by creating
simulacral rather than real contact and exchange? Somehow, one wonders:
in the end, might the Net not come between us and the Other we do not
know?" 

Fortunately Oguibe also describes how the situation can be improved, 

"The first is to encourage a different kind of activism within the
network itself, an activism which aims to engender a culture of
sensitivity and responsibility within the Net" 

adding a strong recommendation to us, as cultural practitioners:

"Not only do they need to inject a certain criticality into their own
practice with regard to the place and fate of the unconnected, they
could also help to raise the awareness advocated here across the
platform of the network."

Oguibe also favors a "regulation" of the net:

"A combination of cultural and political work, and a negotiable modicum
of statutory regulation, is needed in order to reverse the predatory
proclivities of the network."

This idea, although I agree with in principle, I cannot see how it could
work. But I think it is worth to consider alternatives that perhaps
would not necessarily call in the evil's of censorship.


pat binder
http://pat-binder.de