TechSoup - Human Rights and Web 2.0
Here is a snippet from Jody Mahoney worth propagating for two reasons: 1) to promote our thinking about how emergent web technologies can help people create the lives they want and 2) a reminder that our perceptions and the tools we build and deploy carry our cultural biases.TechSoup - News and Views - Notes from Abroad: Human Rights and Web 2.0: "Before attending the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia this November, I did not truly understand the profound impact emerging Web 2.0 tools have had on human rights. Before the conference, I viewed Web 2.0 tools from a very United States-centered perspective, considering blogs and other content tools simply another manifestation of the precociously narrative writing movement that compels authors to reveal the most trivial details of their own precious lives, solicited or otherwise.
At WSIS, however, I began to understand for the first time the extraordinary impact free and open information -- supported by Web 2.0 tools -- has had on human rights movements around the world. As the Netherlands-based NGO Hivos put it at its two-day seminar, Expression Under Repression:
'The Internet strengthens the right to freedom of expression by providing individuals across the globe with new means of sharing and accessing information. Despite the continued exclusion of marginalized communities and many people in the developing world, everyone with access can voice his or her opinion and access decision-makers and local politicians: whether on forum discussions, via blogs or by e-mail, information and communication technology has potential as a tool for enabling democratic participation and for open information sharing.'"
Categories: techsoup, culture, web2.0, netsquared, nptech
posted by Nancy White at 9:16 AM
2 Comments:
Great article!
I have two nitpicks, though:
(1) Their lives are precious.
(2) The details are always solicited. As soon as you point your web browser at someone's blog, you're soliciting someone for their thoughts, and details from their lives.
Just some things I think are worth remembering.
I wish I knew of a wiki page or tag that people catalogued the concrete evidence of blogs and other communication technologies changing people's lives, changing politics, etc., etc.,.
-- Lion
Re: "I wish I knew of a wiki page or tag that people catalogued the concrete evidence of blogs and other communication technologies changing people's lives, changing politics, etc., etc.,."
You should check out NetSquared in Action, which is a
"collection of case studies from nonprofit innovators. Each case tells the story of a project that has made an interesting or groundbreaking use of technology to support a particular strategic goal."
You can browse the collection that's already there, or you can contribute your own success story. It's pretty neat, and you'll probably like it.
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