Freies Vortragsprogramm (Sa, 06.05.2006)

FAIR CODE Free/Open Source Software and the Digital Divide

von Meike Richter

Samstag, 06.05.2006, Saal 6.1, 11:00-12:00 Uhr

Poorly educated people with little financial resources, mostly located in the southern hemisphere, have little chance to have access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) and to the Internet. Since the mid-1990s, the so-called digital divide appeared on the political agenda. By providing access to ICTs, it is hoped to promote economical, political and social development as well.

This lecture explains the digital divide and its implications and gives an overview of the different positions within the discourse. There are three different modes of argumentation: the optimists claiming the new ICTs could strengthen the voice of the poor and developing nations and of marginalized groups; sceptics who believe that new technology alone will make little difference; and pessimists who emphasize that digital technologies will further exacerbate the existing North-South divide.

So far, the choice of the software model has hardly played a role in digital development policy. Proprietary architectures are the rule. Only in recent time, the nature of code becomes an issue. E.g., the country of Brazil is going pro-Linux. Free/Open Source Software has a lot of advantages for poor and developing nations: it offers access to knowledge and information engineering skills of the most developed countries, it promotes technological independence and it is for free. Explanations will be given why it is not so much technological, but a variety of political, cultural and economical reasons that make the mainstreaming of GNU/Linux difficult. This lecture explains why software becomes an increasingly important political issue.

Über den Autor Meike Richter:

Meike Richter studied cultural sciences with emphasis on information engineering at the University of Lüneburg (Germany). She focuses on how digital technologies influence everyday life, especially how classic forms of power transform themselves under the impact of new information technologies. In 2001/2002, Meike spent some time in Latin America, teaching HTML in Nicaragua and working in a Chilean Internet editorial. In 2004/2005, she was one of the organizers of the „download culture?“ lectures in Lüneburg (Germany), which focused on property in digital data spaces, including speakers such as Volker Grassmuck, Markus Beckedahl and Jeanette Hofmann. Meike has a (very neglected) blog www.fair-code.net. She wrote her master's thesis about the role of Free/Open Source Software in the discourse about the Digital Divide. Meike has given a lecture at the 22. Chaos Communication Congress about this issue. She works for NDR Online.