Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 08:16:30 -0400
From: Yacine Khelladi <[email protected]>

THE FOLLOWING TEXT HAS BEEN FORWARDED FROM THE GKD LIST TO THE MISTICA LIST BY YACINE KHELLADI

TEXT RELATED TO MESSAGE SENT BY YACINE KHELLADI, Watch: Study on the Social Effects of the Internet, 19/02/2000

"I had already seen reference to the article that Steve provided a summary of, because some women friends in another country were so incensed about it. Interpreting studies from short snappy media articles about them is always difficult, but I wonder what aspects of the "internet" were they analysing, and just what was this rich vein of human and social interaction that they believe it has interfered with.

I can only speak from my own perspective, and I think that of many of the women (in particular) with whom I have developed an "electronic" relationship, would echo this view. There was a stage when the internet first developed when the choice of content was limited, when the majority of lists were of an academic nature and when email accessibility was limited to a much narrower band of the population. While there is still a long way to go to broaden that access, particularly in areas of undeveloped electric and telephonic infrastructure, networks like GKD for instance facilitate that process.

My own experience has been that having had an email address for over five years, I have only really begun to make full use of either mail or the internet in the last year. This is not because it has technically become easier, but because I have discovered, initially through research queries for specific topics on women, development and health, a "human" dimension to the net. The most effective research I have done was initially facilitated by slightly more efficient use of the basic research engines, but having found sites that appeared to meet my needs, it was follow up communication with site owners, their referring me to practitioners in relevant fields half way across the world that has led to the internet completely changing the way I do things.

I live in the rural West of Ireland, not exactly a developing country, yet our electricity and telephone lines frequently go down. Our public transport is almost non-existent and I am a mother with young children. The internet offers me access to contacts with like minded people all over the world, it offers me access to research material, to intelligent commentary for sharing information. It offers humourous exchange, comfort and sympathy, and already I have been able to write a letter of support to a specialist working in the health area I was researching who was recently able to add a trip to Ireland to her itinerary to the UK and flew into the West allowing us access to her expertise and workshops that we would be unlikely to have sourced via another route.

I don't know who the researchers looked at and what types of positive social interactions they were concerned about, but these days my children and other young people around seem to spend their time either glued in front of a TV or playing shooting games on a playstation. When they are older they have an unfortunate tendency to get involved too early in drugs or drink, and in isolated areas there is little access to wide ranging peer activities, access to art, drama, music or other group activities, other than some sports. In this context I would love to see my children gain from the internet what I have done, albeit that their access has to be controlled, and monitored for safety and appropriateness. I also hope to see more isolated women, many of whom would laugh at the notion of their losing out on some supposed social interactions, be able to link up in a virtual environment to at the very least find someone else out there to whom they can tell their stories in a non-threatening environment, or one where women are not expected to be just happy homemakers, wives and mothers.

I could go on about this ad infinitum, but won't. I suppose I should make an effort to see the full study from Stanford, perhaps given its subject matter it should be made fully available over the internet for a proper debate.

I would also like to thank all those whose contributions to GKD I have enjoyed so much, and whose stories of achievements and successes in often very disadvantaged contexts provide an inspiration to others. I feel we have a lot to learn about the issues surrounding accessibility and equality of access, and particularly around the issue of training up individuals from specific marginalised groups and interests so they are not just beneficiaries in terms of access, but become list owners, web designers and online researchers and project managers. In that sense the debate about an equitable internet is not about criticising the domination of big corporates and shopping or trading interests or the dominance of men in general in most aspects of its development, or even about the misuse of the internet for pornagraphic materials exchange, because it does after all simply reflect the society (societies) we live in, but instead to take up the absolutely huge potential it offers us "newbies" to get our feet in the door and shape new areas and contours within it - to create a culture within a culture. This will be a culture which is based on a human and social interaction within the net, not just a passive shopping or browsing mode. It will reach out to newbies, to women, to people of colour, to the very young and to the very old, to people with disabilities, to environmentalists, to eccentrics, to artists, to storytellers, to musicians. It will not be something any one person or group can consciously create, but it will be something that each of us can contribute to and in pursuing our own goals along the information highway meet travellers with their own baggage and pilgrimages to make whose stories we listen to and learn from, contacts we may keep up or even pursue through finally meeting in the realworld and on occasions, as happened with Seattle, many of us may join together in campaigns against changes that threaten us, in an environment that no government and no global capital interest can stop. That is why I think the internet has added to the dimensions of human and social interactions rather than subtracted from it.

Ann Mallaghan

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Last modified: 24/02/2000