i4donline.net ~ June 2004 Issue

There are probably a couple of ways you could write a non-fiction wide-canvas book in 40 days flat. Firstly, adopt a highly collaborative and de-centralised model for collating information. Secondly, taking that logic further, set a standard questionnaire, distribute the same widely, and get responses to it. This title attempt adopts both these strategies.

There are two authors - should we say, editors? - and seven sponsors for ‘e-Content: Voices From The Ground’. India’s high profile official S Ramakrishnan (“Ramki” to the many who know him in the electronics and IT circuit) writes the brief forward. The book is ‘brought to you by’ the Digital Empowerment Foundation http://www.defindia.org and the UN’s World Summit Award Office http://www.wsis-award.org. All this is typical, perhaps, of the hype that today surrounds the ICT4D debate.

Having begun on a rather cynical note, let’s admit straightaway however that even if the haste and hurry sometimes shows (“this book is a result of only 40 days of work, from storyboard to printing”) this has the potential of being a rather useful book, all in all. For anyone interested in the subject, and many more of us need to be, this brings in ideas and inspiration from a wide diversity of voices and viewpoints, with a diversity that makes a difference.

It’s a matter of additional pride that this book comes out from India, a country whose contribution to the ICT4D debate is appreciated worldwide - if only we could be much more discerning in separating the wheat from the chaff.

Delhi-based Osama Manzar, known for his writings and initiatives on the New Media, teamed up with World Summit Award’s Prof Dr Peter A Bruck of Austria, to put together this 332-page hardbound book. It consists of interviews with 30 ‘country experts’ who each explain the situation of e-content in their diverse geographical regions.

For someone from the ‘developing’ world (ouch, to use that term hurts – is the gap really narrowing, and are we presuming that we all want to, or can indeed, reach levels of consumption and lifestyles of the ‘developed’ without sending the planet on a tail-spin?) the stories that come in from Asia, Africa and Latin America are really interesting.

It’s probably time to raise some basic questions. Does the uniform label of e-Content make sense to all? (Burundi, with 6 million population and 1000 Internet connections, lacks even the basic infrastructure like electricity and phone lines. Burundi is not alone. E-content can, at best, be a distant dream for such countries for quite some years to come.)

Can we talk, in the same breath, of countries as disparate as Cameroon (16 million population, just 100 websites, and “the country is starting from the scratch... everything has to be done”) and the Netherlands (“a country with an extensive content industry even before the advent of the Internet... three of the largest international publishers were located in the country...”)? Are we talking about comparables? Or, is this like the elephant of Hindoostan and the six blind men, neither of whom could decipher what part of the animal really was comprised it?

Countries which had a head-start since a century or more, had greater access to information and education, and inherited the legacy of the written word, are obviously in a different world. The confidence of Europe and North America stands out, together with a handful of more affluent nations in the other continents. Is it just ego-pandering to have the title of one chapter read then: “India is the idea of the 21st century”?

There are lessons to learn from countries as distant as Italy and Ireland, and the former East Bloc. But, one found the ‘stories of the South’ to be often inspiring, as they sometimes throw up valiant stories of battles against limited resources, and the daily struggle that is life.

Sub-consciously perhaps, one was picking out lessons which could be replicated back home, in our part of the world. Take the case of Brazil, with a website for journalists only, another from the post-office, one which allows registered users to create content (by ranking restaurants, hotels, movies, etc), and sites for blood-donation or senior citizens.

Sprinkled across this heavy-margined book are useful websites from diverse nations. Cultures which we otherwise don’t get a chance to interact with-mainly due to language barriers in a world where two non-English cultures have to necessarily communicate in English-were interesting to encounter here. Take China’s http://www.ssreader.com.cn-a digital e-library offering over 250,000 digital books, with 20 million downloaded free since the year 2000.

Each chapter also begins with some interesting key statistics. Take some telling figures from India. Population: over 1050 milli nternet connections, 7 million, phone lines 20 million, mobile connections/users 3 million. PCs installed 5 million. ISPs 43, websites 20,000 (in Indian languages) and 130,000 (in English). Oddly, a country like Indonesia, roughly one-fifth India’s size, has more Internet connections and nearly four-times more mobile phone users.

By sheer comparison of the reality in different parts of the globe, one gets a good idea of where we’re headed. Andy Carvin, a well-known name on ICT4D mailing lists from the Benton Foundation, makes some interesting points about the situation in the US.

The US, says he, probably produces more online content than any other country in the globe. But this is also a “curse” - there’s so much information being churned out, that they find it impossible to “sort through the morass of it all”. Besides, a lot of content in the US is “driven by profit”. So, producers “will only create content that sells well to a mass audience ... that’s generally rather bland and not ground-breaking”. It also means that non-commercial content, as well as content of interest to smaller audiences - ethnic minorities, small towns or rural areas, etc - simply has less of a chance of getting produced.

Canada has an interesting attitude. It has “more institutions” than can be mentioned what enable e-Content through critical ways. These include funding, collaboration or network enabling, and mentorship. In many parts of the globe, we seem to believe this will happen by serendipity.

From Egypt comes a common Third World complaint: subject-matter specialists are often unaware of the value of converting their knowledge into e-Content. They’re thus simply not motivated enough to do the job.

Zambia and Ghana are among the few countries where the local experts put the cost of software and hardware firmly on the agenda. This seems to be an issue many simply presume doesn’t exist. Ghanian expert Guido Sohne, the active-in-cyberspace and articulate freelance software developer, is alone a lone voice in this volume that talks about how Free/Libre and Open Source Software. He calls FLOSS “an initiative needed... to accelerate the adoption of current technology...”

This book tackles a wide canvas. From the confident Mauritius (“we, in Mauritius, have the necessary ingredients to ensure a successful passage to this new world... the highest literacy... an enterprising spirit.. and a culture of innovation”) to the 32-million strong Sudan, suffering from the woes of a typical Asian-African-LatAm nation (“The availability of most of the material necessary for creating content on the Internet is in English, a language which deprives a large proportion of the real content-creators from expressing themselves directly”). Co-author Dr Bruck (bruck@research.at) points out that technologies, systems and tools to generate, distribute and store content has grown rapidly; yet, content markets are neither transparent nor open. Says he: “Rather, concentration has reached a global scale with the likely scenario of five to seven dominant content providers, creating a cultural oligopoly of a new magnitude.”

Ireland reminds us: “Without inventive and creative people, there is no e-content. Without commitment, there are no results. Without careful planning, management and patience, projects fail. Many projects fail because they are far too ambitious and unsustainable.”

And another from Italy: “Modern governance is not just about delivering services. The notion includes democratic and cooperative policy formulation, citizen and civil society involvement, transparent and participative implementation of policies as well as continuous independent evaluation of results. However, these aspects are still terra incognita for the vast majority of e-Solution providers.” Besides its contents, the story of this book is interesting in itself. In December 2003, e-Content experts from 36 countries gathered to select 40 best e-content practices out of more than 800 nominations from 136 countries. This was part of the UN’s World Summit Award formed under the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society).

Recognising the “best in the world” can be a task fraught with dangers. The best way to kill an innovative e-initiative is to give it a global award, it’s said. Maybe the skepticism is not misplaced, as one continues seeing well-packaged awards keep winning prizes, while deserving ones with the potential impact hardly make the splash.

But, that apart, this book is a compilation of snapshots of the e-Content scenario in two-and-half dozen countries of the globe. Its jacket says that cyber version 2.0 of the book is being produced on the Web to “cover all 136 participating countries in the WSA”. If completed, this would be interesting indeed.

For Rs 750 in India - maybe it shouldn’t have been hard-bound - this books seems a bit overpriced by domestic standards. But it’s surely worth reading, and contains some rather useful insights... even if, like much of the content on the Net and about the Net, it’s doomed to get outdated early.