- Giorgio Ungania
- Abu Dhabi/dubai
- United Arab Emirates
Curator | Sheikha Salama Foundation , TEDx Dubai
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How we can use social media on a world scale to launch a global campaign to recognize Internet access as a basic human right?
Internet access is become as vital as access to energy or natural resources. Especially when looking at underdeveloped areas of the world it becomes clear that access to the shared knowledge via web can do wonders for the growth of these areas.
Topics:
Internet government social change technology
David Chan
Terry Kane
A World Bank study into the impact of levels of primary education stated that “In today’s world, simply getting children into schools in not enough; governments must also ensure that children complete the primary cycle and attain the basic knowledge and skills needed for personal well-being and national development”.
Numerous factors from the World Bank study show that although enrolment is important, it does not constitute a guaranteed increase in economic output and overall relays the importance of the quality of education and investment in learning above the actual enrolment levels.
In contrast to the Coleman Report “… schools matter much more in the setting of poor countries. A large part of the reason behind this appears to be the principle of diminishing returns — in the setting of poor countries providing more education resources has a larger impact than in a rich country where school resources are already at a relatively high level”. (Coleman, James S. Equality of Educational Opportunity (COLEMAN) Study (EEOS), 1966 )
So... how to tie this into Social Media as a Social Change tool? A couple of ideas:
- Create a standard message that is globally recognised!
- Lobby through SM, global organisations (MS, Apple, BP etc) - select a few to target, with key messages to garner support and investment when they utilise developing countries to create their products / services
- Lobby at a local level, for locals to use SM in order to raise, from the "roots up" a standard demand to all international organisations to respond to - Provide the messages, platforms on an enterprise scale
- Lead by example - schools in developed countries, leading the campaign through SM for free access support to schools in developing countries
Dominic Muren 50+
As a related example, when the United States recognized that freedom from slavery was a basic human right (although at the time, only enforceable on Americans), the infrastructure to replace slavery was by no means in place. The civil war, and post-war depression in the South stemmed directly from this disparity of infrastructure and need. But that didn't (and doesn't) make it any more valid to enforce human enslavement -- and numerous international treaties explicitly lay this fact out.
Your example of water is an interesting one. I would submit that access to water is, at least tacitly, recognized as a basic right -- this is the motivation behind the exciting debates on corporate control of water supplies, and for great films like Irena Salina's "Flow" about water rights around the world. Water rights haven't been explicitly codified in constitutions as a basic right, but I think that these changes will come as the heralds of the predicted water wars over the next 20 years. The civil war wasn't the first or last conflict to arise out of rights/infrastructure disparities.
As for internet access, the upside is that unlike water or slavery, it's much easier to distribute and redesign for maximum impact with minimum cost. For example, a minimum level of connection -- say low-bandwidth SMS interface with text-based databases -- might be established globally. This low-bandwidth connection, like free speech, or accommodation for childhood, or any of the other rights outlined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, wouldn't give the best possible access to the fullness of the internet. But it would give all the crucial benefits.
If you don't think you can get a lot of mileage out of low-fi networking, there are a couple million Egyptians and Tunisians who would disagree...
Philip Lelyveld
In the United States, I have to pay for water, yet access to water is a fundamental human need as well as a basic human right. But I cannot claim that I am being denied a basic human right if the water company turns off my service. Government and Corporate largesse make it possible for me to get a drink of water in a public or private facility. But I cannot demand access to it when the facility is closed.
If the internet were a basic human right;
- who would pay for its infrastructure?
- who would pay for access to it?
- how would people who chose not to or are unable to pay for it be accommodated?
- would a family or community be allowed to filter out elements of it they actively do not want?
- ...
isahr rivera
Helder Araujo 500+
(It should be included inside the 26th article: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml)
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Let's try to write the 4th paragraph down?
I think it should be related to "free access to autodidact tools" such as libraries, museums and internet.
Jody Johannessen
Ibrahim Elbadawi
Sebastian Betti 500+
The co-founder of busk.com, Helder Araújo (TEDxAmazonia, TEDxSP) said that the 75 percent of the knowledge we learn, we get it by informal means but we still give more importance to the other 25 percent.
And talking about the access to information, "We live in a 'Knowledgecism Age', a kind of racism of knowledge."
Then, a concluding remark by Jailson de Souza e Silva [http://www.ashoka.org/node/3946] from Observatório de Favelas (Slum Observatory): "I'm that arrogant that I think I can help change the world"
Christophe Cop 500+
* To let it get recognized, I suggest you try and reach the politicians and identify those who wrote and curate the "universal declaration of human rights"
=> so it's the UN http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml
Lobby lobby lobby to put it on the agenda.
Giorgio Ungania 500+
Sebastian Betti 500+
According to Ms Suvi Lindén, Finland's Minister of Communications, high speed access to everybody will improve people's quality of life especially in the less populated areas, will boost business, enable electronic communications and encourage online banking.
Of course in many of our countries a lot of work is needed to be done in social inclusion first, and that's why another example I'd like to share with all of you is one interesting TEDxTalk from TEDxBuenosAires about the One Laptop Per Child experience in Uruguay:
Miguel Brechner Frey: A revolutionary approach to the social inclusion - OLPC in Uruguay
http://tedxbuenosaires.org/?page_id=2096
OLPC related TEDTalks:
http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_negroponte_in_1984_makes_5_predictions.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_negroponte_on_one_laptop_per_child.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_negroponte_on_one_laptop_per_child_two_years_on.html
Carlos Miranda Levy 500+
My argument is not purely word play here. What people need is not the Internet, but freedom of expression, access to information, access to education, health care, freedom to communicate, organize and engage, freedom to choose their own paths and grow, among other basic, more profound and even more simple needs.
While the Internet can certainly be a very handy tool for overcoming challenges and satisfying the needs listed above, it does not satisfy them by itself and you could surf the web for a hundred years and satisfy not one of them. Also, what we call the Internet is a set of technologies, which are rapidly changing. It is the values provided by those technologies we should guarantee and provide access to, not the technologies themselves.
Mobile communications are changing the landscape fast and some interesting experiments in data communication and human interaction at a global scale have already been happening outside the real of the Internet (Amazon's Kindle network, etc.)
Internet access should not be a basic human right just as free mobility does not turn owning a vehicle into a basic human right. There might be dozens of alternatives to Internet access for satisfying those needs just as buses, taxies, subways and trains are alternatives to owning a car.
Kat Haber 500+