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Fundamental
Considerations
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Nowadays, few people
dare to question if the computer science, the telecommunications, the
multimedia worlds and the one that conforms in that area a bit imprecise
where these three are fusing, are impacting in more and more aspects of
the life of the inhabitants of the planet.
The knowledge is admitted
as a key piece in the socioeconomic relations established by the societies,
the organizations and the countries. The knowledge of the technologies
of information and communication (ICT) is specially important because
it refers to an area of the knowledge generated by the man and that has
been produced to make viable some exchange forms and of relations; they
are a fundamental support of the process of the current globalization
that leads the society of the knowledge to which some authors refer.
The development and
the use of the ICT is mentioned explicitly or implicitly in the plans
and projects of most of the international and multilateral agencies of
cooperation and financing, in those of the central or sectoral offices
of planning of diverse countries of the world or in those of the biggest
transnational corporations. The expansion of the ICT responds to the necessity
of the society to answer to its own globalization plans.
The dominant role
that the developping countries have played till now in relation with the
social production of technology is the one of consumers, and this in order
to adapt themselves to the economic, political and social outlines that
are dictated in the advanced economies countries.
The ICT represent
a group of technologies that gives the opportunity to opt for a different
way that have been historically chosen by the developing countries, because
it is evident that it is not required to follow the same steps or stages
than the others. The multimedias - interaction with texts, graphics, images,
sounds, animations, videos -, the non sequential handling of the multimedia
documents, empowered thanks to the possibilities of the telecommunications
� the Internet being their most emblematic product - are not yet totally
understood and taken in advantage in the whole extension of their potentialities.
They represent a rupture in the paradigms of conception, organization,
distribution and execution of activities used by the man. For those who
want to be in the most advanced stadiums of the development, dominating
the reaches of this rupture is still a fundamental goal.
So, the dilemma is
similar in the North and in the South with the particularity that the
North is the main generator of ICT and therefore it possesses mature capacities
to produce answers to its necessities. For the South the challenge is
different, it deals with the social appropriation of the ICT and with
making them work for their own development plans. Their handling, their
production, their implementation and in the uses to make them work in
producing solutions to their own problems must be innovative.
One of the ways of
favouring the construction of a solidary and responsible society is to
allow the North and the South to take advantage of the ICT under fair
and balanced conditions. This is, without the big imbalances and disproportions
that exist nowadays in so decisive aspects as the access facility to these
resources for population's wide sectors that are socially excluded of
the process. Of course, this environment condition goes beyond an investment
problem and it won't be solved from one day to another.
Nevertheless the South
has improved itself in appropriating the ICT to produce solutions to its
most urgent problems that it faces in its development process. It is also
necessary to admit that those advances have not been sufficient neither
quantitatively neither qualitatively.
In Latin America and
the Caribbean we can distinguish a group of conditions that are traversely
marking the efforts of development of the region and that can be tried
to overcome with the employment of solutions based on the ICT. Such is
the case of the gender question: political, economic, social and cultural
diferenciation between women and men. It is important to impel a better
distribution of the benefits of the development that will necessarily
imply a better social, political and economical justness between the actors
and actresses of the process. They are also other socially discriminated
groups, as the indigenous population or disabled people that could also
have the opportunity to combat their current disadvantage situation with
innovative applications of the ICT.
We can not lose sight
of another perspective, that is trying to surpass the traditional environments
of popularization that the projects of employment of the ICT have, and
particularly the Internet, to produce social impact. They are usually
known in the context of the NGO, in the academic sectors but rarely in
the sectors specialized in technology. The diffusion of the successful
experiences and of those that have not been it so much are basic to stimulate
the advance in this field.
Linked to the previous
topic, in the continent there are a plurality of languages and, if their
existence is not recognized, much more isolated compartments would be
being built in the region. Besides the multiple indigenous languages that
cohabit in Latin America and the Caribbean, there are four languages:
Spanish, English, Portuguese and French. This is a challenge for those
who advance projects or look for information about assimilable initiatives
in their respective countries because they should overcome the limitations
associated to the use of a single language in a multilinguistical continent.
Thematic
axes
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The identification
and the strenthening of the worklines that may produce a better social
impact oriented to the improvement of the quality of life of the South
residents has been a present restlessness in the investigations on the
social domain of the ICT, carried out by organizations like FPH, VECAM,
FUNREDES, ANAIS and others. A fundamental element that has been detected
in that search is that if we want the results to be effective, it is indispensable
that the South itself participates in the determination of its urgent
problems as well as in the formulation and execution of the projects that
are defined.
In this document,
and being based on the knowledge of what has been carried out previously
in this field, for the discussion it has been thought about some thematic
axes that seem to reach some resonance in the moment when we have to look
for consent on the high-priority work lines for the developing countries,
and in which the use of the ICT should end up representing a valuable
alternative to overcome the current situation. Each one is in itself a
group of queries in search of answers.
Education
Nearly all the development
projects are giving the first priority to the education. Reaching the
universal primary education for the first years of the next millennium
requires of the competition of multiple capacities to form students and
to modernize the teachers, and several international organizations have
agreed on this goal.
The education in itself,
the process teaching - learning, is in constant revision in front of the
advances of the ICT, and so a continuous renovation of the paradigms that
are normalizing this process is necessary. The ICT has been for long time
distinguished as tools supposed to play a singular role in this sense,
and, breaking molds like that of the sequential reading and introducing
the multimediatic option, they generate a platform of countless alternative
to explore.
The quantity and quality
of projects of application of the ICT in the educational area in Latin
America and the Caribbean and in the world in general is not desestimable.
However the magnitude of the coming task needs more and more and better
and better applications in the field and especially those that solve the
programmatic necessities characteristic of the region.
Health
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To assist to big population's
sectors that, according to the same indicators of critical poverty mentioned
previously, live in deficit feeding and health conditions and don't have
access to appropriate services of health is one of the biggest challenges
in the region. It is a reality that affects as well the inhabitant of
the cities as the one of the rural areas.
The ICT can become
a key tool to assist the multiple aspects of this problem. From facilitating
the access to excellent information to assist particular cases until to
establish nets of alert epidemic or to support telemedicine applications.
From contributing to the personnel's updating that works in the health
sector until empowering the administration and the services of the centers
of attention to the public.
The coordination of
national public politics in the health sector with regional strategies
agreed in international organisms, as the Pan-American Organization of
Health, is an environment of action especially important because the problems
of health don't stop in the geopolitical frontiers of the countries.
Democracy,
Gouvernance and Civic Participation
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The construction and
the consolidation of stable democratic systems in societies plagued with
serious structural imbalances, reflected in indicators as those of critical
poverty, is one of the most urgent tasks in the region. The use of the
ICT to create or to sustain organs of power and of civic participation
in a democratic order represents an alternative to the old methods that
are yet showing their exhaustion.
The production or
the reinforcement of the efficiency and of the transparency of the administration
of those in power, the organization of the local, regional communities,
of the unions and of diverse social sectors are work fronts where the
ICT can contribute interesting solution options.
The region must incorporate
itself to the process of current globalization in the less traumatic and
more constructive way, for its own interests. If these technologies, as
it has been said, are conforming with the base of that process, it is
indispensable to appropriate of them to conform in Latin America and the
Caribbean social structures accordinng with an outline of solidary and
responsible development.
Economy
and Productivity
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The economic apparatuses
of the region face the challenge of competing in more and more open markets,
where the political protectives weaken quickly, while the productive practices
have not transformed at the same rhythm as the changes imposed by the
globalization processes and integration.
Most of the employment
in Latin America and the Caribbean is located in the small and medium
companies and this is a sector that traditionally has been seen as marginal
and not very advanced, from the technological point of view. Such an attentive
vision against the rupture required to activate the base of the economic
system of these countries.
The ICT makes viable
a redefinition in the way like the organizations have been structured
to approach their respective business. They don't only open the opportunity
to think again what has been made till now and to assume it with the new
technological paradigm but also to create new opportunities of business.
The previous statement is as applicable to the economies of the countries
as to all forms of organization of smaller scale and indistinctly of the
economic sector where it acts.
Language
and Cultures
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Latin America and
the Caribbean is a region where have converged and have fused multiple
cultures and languages. They coexist nowadays next to those of the original
inhabitants of the continent. The use of the ICT can give an important
contribution to reinforce the cultural and linguistic identities of America
as well as to energize its integration process.
The empowerement of
the cultural and linguistic communities by means of the articulation of
its members via the use of the ICT is an objective to be assumed and developed
by the own actors that intervene in these environments. We need tools
designed to overcome the barriers that separate and to cross the bridges
that relate the cultures and the languages of America.
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