Indigenous knowledge and information for local needs

Information Society: Voices from the South

Summary of discussions on the topic
Knowledge Societies

Prepared by Partha Pratim Sarker
Co-editor, Bytes for All
& Moderator, Information Society Discussion Forum

Main theme line of discussion

Information Society: What does it mean for the South?

Sub-topics:

(1.A.) Should ICT be always associated with Information Society?
(1.B.) Information society for grassroots development: Who takes the most important role (of the information intermediaries)? Government? Private sector? NGOs? Community cooperatives? Individuals? Who and why??? What could be the possible roadmap?
(1.C.) Indigenous knowledge and information for local needs: How to collect, process and deliver that?

As per sub-topic of 'Indigenous Knowledge and Local Needs of Information' major concern had been focused around the need for localized content to be freely (or cheaply) and locally available and the ability or capacity of people to use and adopt that information for better lives. That would require solutions, power, participation, ownership and capacity in favor of the poor in an environment of local information society. Many users brought different dimensions to this discussion. Following is an attempt to pick up some of these opinions that form a varied nature of the subject.

Reality
Pamela McLean illustrated the realities more in an intrinsic way. She wrote: 'Really the problems are very simple and basic. For example, and in no particular order: poor health, no internet, no phones, limited postal services, bad roads, corruption, intimidation, ignorance, appalling sanitation and a totally unreliable power supply. All the usual 'Northern' assumptions of 'how easy it is' to achieve certain things have to be put aside. Things are very different'.

Locality
Ajit Maru argued about locality of knowledge. 'When we talk of "virtual communities", potato growers in Bolivia and potato growers in Lahul Spiti area of India are "local" to each other in sharing information and knowledge. However, ICT as "tool" also brings new issues, for example, language and standardization of exchange media before information and skills exchange can take place'.

This position was somewhat reflected in Prasant Sharma's comment as he said, 'Instead of concentrating on indigenous knowledge and how to collect, process, deliver and use that, perhaps we need to shift our focus to create information systems that do not tell people the good things about their knowledge, but the political factors which go into making their knowledge redundant'.

Similarly, Krishna Alluri pointed out that, 'There should be a 'Purpose' for collecting, processing, delivering and using indigenous knowledge and local wisdom. The identification of that purpose should also be participatory. Perhaps, we should be asking 'How to use participatory approaches to collect (what, why, where, when, how, and for whom etc.), process, deliver and use Indigenous Knowledge and Information for Local Needs?'

Standardization
Standardization of format and language was an important part of the discussions. Many issues were raised in that direction.

Yaacov Iland pointed out strongly that 'an important goal for the South at WSIS will be the adoption of free(public) file formats and strong standards. As an example of how this is a problem, the newer versions of IE are not W3C standards compliant. An individual or organisation who paid for webpage design when previous versions of IE were current may now be forced to pay again to upgrade their site so that it displays properly on the new IE. That's money that could far better be spent elsewhere'.

Heimo Claasen lunched his first observation on W3C standard and 'doubling/trebling of mail text in form of HTML, or worse "attachments" that cause more costs for the recipients in the Third World countries.

Guido Sohne suggested a realistic approach. 'The most important of which are avoiding dependence on technology single source by leveraging free software and open standards coupled with finding ways to address the cost and control of information pipes', said Guido.

Modanmohan Rao said: 'Technical standards (such as Unicode) also need to represent local language content. Unfortunately, not all Asian languages have standardized Unicode representations or keyboards (e.g. Khmer). Some Asian languages being official languages in multiple countries further complicates standards issues. For example, Tamil is officially recognized in India, Singapore, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka, requiring international cooperation to develop effective standards. Finally, effective tools for content conversion from non-digital formats are also required'.

Hardware/Software Issue
Yaacov Iland agreed with the views expressed by Pamela and Ajit and partly extended the arguments to hardware and software elements. His own experience of running P1s with 32-64MB of RAM for win95/98 or for Knoppix (Linux) and OpenOffice in Kenya and many other problems such as, lack of CD ROM Drives, lack of speed on the Internet, searching difficulties etc. are also expressed as the barriers to indigenous knowledge society development.

Alex Weir stressed the need and use of CD ROMs for dissemination of development information. He also mentioned about two sources of CD ROM based information. One is, the www.humaninfo.org sets, mainly the CDL 2.0 CD, which is in a windows-based proprietary format, greenstone digital library. CDL 2.0 contains 1,550 publications with 160,000 pages on one CD (and also a large number of diagrams). And the other is, the www.vita.org CD, issued in 1994, in some windows-based proprietry format (textpro lite). It contains approx 190 subject areas, with 13 Megabytes of text and 4,500 diagrams. He also added that his aim is to 'expand the quality and quantity of free and/or low-cost information on development technologies (including appropriate technology) which is presently available'.

Defining Indigenous Knowledge
Many attempted to identify the meaning of indigenous knowledge and information. Vitalicy Chifwepa considered 'indigenous knowledge to be a summation of what a society concludes and hold as true over a period of time through interaction with the environment and with each other'. This obviously differed with others who wanted to put the term in a definition.

Guido Sohne emphasized more on accessibility/connectivity and put it this way: 'In a connected world, indigenous knowledge is the extent to which one is connected to other people. Indigenous knowledge will create itself once those who can use it and those who can create it are connected today'.

Prashant Sharma explained the gap between our understanding and the reality of Indigenous knowledge: 'Is it knowledge that exists within a specific geographic expanse, within a specific people who live within it? Typically, I think in our minds we have a 'notion' of indigenous knowledge, somewhat romanticized, somewhat idealized. Example: Local healers with a deep knowledge of local herbs and plants'.

But Steve Cisler gave an interesting reference to Martin Nakta's (a Torres Strait Islander and Australian academic) paper where the idea of indigenous knowledge is constituted as 'a contentious one. From what constitutes `indigenous' to whose interests are being served by the documentation of such knowledge there lies a string of contradictions, of sectorial interests, of local and global politics, of ignorance, and of hope for the future...One might suppose that Indigenous knowledge refers to Indigenous peoples' knowledge but this would not reflect current usage of the term..'

Santi Guillen referred to a framework of interaction not of content. To him the problem is 'how to avoid the technocratic approach that computer professionals seem to partage all around the world? I don't think the conflict is a north/south but normal people/computer expert. It's a cultural one'. Claude Almansi supported the statement by giving reference of his/her experience even in a Northern country- Switzerland.

Language Issue
Development of content in Local Language was an important part of the whole discussion. Some viewed this as a narrow focus and may be a waste of resources. Guido Sohne explained this position: 'We have witnessed the coalescing and diverging tendencies of language on the African continent. On one hand, you can see how peoples who speak different native languages consider themselves as part of a nation and on the other, how these nations have between them a vast divide predicated on language differences. Developing indigenous content in this manner, splitting knowledge and information into different areas will erect barriers to the knowledge that is needed to be effective and relevant in this era'.

But Steve Cisler provided counter arguments on the ground that 'Local languages obviously matter a great deal. For many it's at the heart of their cultural identity. I think of the time I spent in Togo (it shares a border with Ghana), and the Ewe people happened to speak a language that was one of the first to be transliterated into a phonetic alphabet. The local (Ewe) was strengthened by a universal tool (phonetics)....students in the mainstream Hawaiian public schools. So I think people can be engaged locally and what may seem to be a narrow focus but also be quite tuned in to the dominant language and culture as well as to the huge range of information and points of view on the Net'.

Issues of local languages and indigenous knowledge brought in discussions on different aspects of communication.

Earl Mardle said, 'The vast majority of our communication is both in our local language and within a fairly small geographical horizon within which our most important social, economic and political activity occurs.The technology is able to facilitate, accelerate and archive that communication for many purposes, most of them benign. But it will only do that effectively if it is available to people when and where they need it (walking 5KM to a telecentre is not the answer), through an interface that they can use (if it doesn't support non-literate users it will fail), in a language that makes sense to them (must be local)'.

Guido Sohne said, 'I am not saying that local languages should be excluded. I am saying that the goal of say, Africanizing the Internet should be based on education and technology instead of on language'.

Somewhat reversing the trend Madanmohan Rao wrote, 'In many cases, the availability of relevant content and related services motivates groups to adopt digital tools, platforms, standards, and channels to create and access digital content. However, a digital content strategy also needs to include content in non-digital formats (eg. traditional media like books, newspapers, TV, radio) to raise awareness of the potential of digital content, particularly in developing countries where diffusion of digital technologies may not be as widespread'.

Some expressed their preference and experience with machine and automated translation but others cast doubt with the effectiveness of that.

Examples
Examples and best practices also followed the question of associating ICTs with language issue. Anurag Mehra emphasized on the development of indigenous content with illustration of example on Shiksha India. Andrew Benson mentioned about iEARN Sierra Leone project, Pamela McLean referred to the OOCD 2000+ situation regarding languages, Anil Gupta refereed to www.sristi.org where they provide a network of grassroots innovators and a multimedia database in local language. Asian Open Source Center, http://www.asiaosc.org/enwiki/ provided information on localization and open source projects and resources in Asia.

What is Missing?
A critical debate at the end brought an interesting dimension to the whole discussion. Were we missing out to put priority on, people, technology or the both?

Ajit Maru wrote, 'We seem to be getting mired in this discussion into a situation where we think that technology, and especially software, is the solution... We must remember that the last/first segment of communication in a community will remain the spoken word, graphics and text, in that order, and mostly face-to-face. We are not looking at issues other than technology, primarily the need to build capacity to access information for local use and to disseminate needs for new information.'

But Yaacov Iland viewed this differently. He supported the view that technology is central to Information Society discussion. He pointed out: 'Face-to-face is not sustainable as the primary method of information transfer in an Information Society. People move too slowly, remember too inaccurately and have too many biases to be good conduits for precise and/or lengthy information... Information Society is qualitatively different from the current society because of the quantitative differences in how much information (and how many kinds of information) people have access to, how quickly they can access it and how few resources are required for a person to make information widely accessible. These quantitative differences are dually dependent on education and technology'.

Prashant Sharma disagreed with Yaacov on the point that, 'People may move too slowly, may remember too inaccurately, and may have too many biases, but all 'information' which is created, reviewed, and processed is by people, for people, and acted upon by people. So these concerns will remain, whatever be the tools used'.

Go to other sub-topics:

(1.A.) Should ICT be always associated with Information Society?
(1.B.) Information society for grassroots development: Who takes the most important role (of the information intermediaries)? Government? Private sector? NGOs? Community cooperatives? Individuals? Who and why??? What could be the possible roadmap?

Information Society: Voices from the South is an online discussion forum run by Digital Opportunity Channel in partnership with Bytes for All. The forum will run until December 2003 and will discuss a number of broad themes related to the emerging information society and the process of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).