<amarc-s> at the end (!) of amarc-1

[Bram Dov Abramson <bram@tao.ca>]

[These are some summary notes at the end of [amarc-1] -- which has come
very suddenly indeed!  Many of the thoughts here emerge from conversation
with Alain Ambrosi, who is hard at work planning for Videazimut's
international seminar in Capetown this September. --bda]

The other day I picked a magazine called "Business 2.0".  Its slogan: "New
Economy - New Rules - New Leaders".

It's not a bad slogan, as slogans go.  In this [amarc-1] phase of our
discussion, the state of telecoms monopolies and oligopolies has been a
major sticking point.  What all of these telecoms giants have in common, of
course, is that they're engaged in a major turf war with newer, younger,
upstarts -- and all want to prove that they're fittest for survival in the
Business world version two.  Especially given that that world is partly
their creation.

Put telecoms oligopolies and glossy visionary-style magazines together, and
you witness the unfolding of ideas in action.  Ads for fancy gadgets;
solemn declarations of "New Rules: Driving principles for the Internet
age"; regular columns by thinkers and gurus -- you can taste the excitement
over this new world.  And the resources are there to make it happen.

So "Business 2.0" is a tangible trace of one of the forces driving today's
media landscape. It's an elaborate programme which imagines the networked
environment in a particular way, and supplies people with the ideas and
concepts which they can then set out to undertake. 

What we need, of course, is an alternative vision: a Civil Society 2.0, or
a Democracy 2.0, or a Living Space 2.0.  Not that technology can recreate
the world for us -- that's people's job.  But if new information and
communication technologies are to be devised, invented, rolled out, used,
and devised all over again, then that process should be animated by a
democratic vision.   Think of it: magazines with teasers on wind-up radios
instead of digital next-generation Walkmans; statistics on net connection
inequalities instead of advertising revenues; features on transnational
NGOs and not just transnational corporations; ways to facilitate on-line
interaction that go way beyond electronic commerce.

That kind of magazine exists in bits and pieces in hundreds of newsletter,
publications and reports.  AMARC's InteRadio is a good example.  But what
I'm talking about here is an articulated vision that welds itself to a real
programme for media design -- that is, design of an entire media
environment, and a sensibility to go with it.  That sensibility would
inflame passions, excite techies, and reach out to the uninitiated.  Just
like Business 2.0.

Let's harbour no illusions: this kind of articulated vision is only a tiny
part of what is needed right now.  Most of the world's population has never
surfed the web, received spam e-mail, even placed a phone call.  Still, the
changes wrought by ICTs affect far more than those who use them.  

One of the threads in our discussion on [amarc-1] bore the label "Brazil
and Puerto Rico".  It catalogued some of the places where organised labour
and popular demonstrations have entered into direct dialogue with the
vision of Business 2.0: Puerto Rico, with the GTE buy-out; Brazil, with the
Telebras privatisation; the USA, at Bell Atlantic; Colombia; and another
strike averted in Barbados.  Not-yet-liberalised markets haven't
necessarily fared much better, as we heard with regard to the dealings
between APC's Czech affiliate and the Czech monopoly provider, spt Telecom.

Yet even as telecom workers are disgruntled, many users have no access to
the technologies the strikers worked on.  "Getting Here from There": how
can larger slices of populations be involved in the process of
democratising communication, when their mix of media technologies is very
different than ours -- "ours" being those of us in a position to read this
e-mail?  Organising live fora in various locations, to be summarised and
fed back into discussion lists (and vice versa!) is one idea.  Sending
dispatches from our virtual discussions to flesh-and-blood journalists, to
be printed in newspapers and broadcast over airwaves, is another.

Those are some ideas we should take forward as we continue our discussion.
As you know, [amarc-1] has represented a complement to the <vplen> list
which originated with Videazimut's Virtual Conference.  One of the goals of
both discussion spaces has been to devise strategies for building the
right-to-communicate movement.  

So our discussion will continue, at perhaps a more sedate pace, back on
<vplen>.  At the same time, we're still scheming and planning on ways to
expand that discussion outward and move it forward.  Videazimut is playing
a coordinating role in evolving an internet-based 'Observatoire' on global
communication policy bringing together other civil society groups, other
initiatives and other individuals working in the same direction -- on
implanting a global communication policy framework that emerges from civil
society.  

Why bother?  Well, the World Congress idea -- at a recent meeting in
Glasgow (a report will soon be circulated on <vplen>) it was proposed that
this name be changed to "Civil Society Summit on Media and Communications
-- is very much about creating links and coordinating actions.  More than
that, we believe that to democratise communication we need to build a
public memory, a collective archive and a common vision: not simply
critique Business 2.0, but create alternate ways of imagining.

What we're trying to come up with is an online platform and resource for
the right to communicate, whose presence is distributed world-wide.  We'd
like to grow its content and its usage beyond the internet's footprint
through dispatches to journalists, live fora, printed resources.  We'll
need to be wary of diverting time and resources away from the material
world and into the virtual one: that's not the idea.  But as virtual and
material space becomes more and more intertwined, zoning in and out of the
same places, the question is more and more one of the direction of our
actions, not the environment in which we do it.  

In other words: a discussion list, and an archive/WWW presence.  Ideally,
we'd create separate lists according to language, finding a civil society
organisation functioning in that language to help operate and moderate
these discussions.  Regular updates could keep each language community
apprised of what the others were discussing, and open up spaces of
intercultural dialogue.

This is only a small step; its goals are modest.  But we hope it's part of
something bigger.  Please do contact us, as individuals or as
organisations, if you would like to help define its direction.  Thanks for
participating; let's talk more; and here -- let me leave you with this
quote taken from an article by Susan George in "Dissent" magazine (Summer
1997), and forwarded to me by a <vplen>/[amarc-1] list member:

"Neoliberals don't mind financing white men if white men happen to be best
at delivering the intellectual goods.  But they are also funding a great
many women, African-Americans, and other minority thinkers and writers; as
well as dozens of college newspapers, thousands of graduate students, and a
small armada of journals.  Literally hundreds of millions of dollars are
spent every year on purchasing present and future right-wing intellectual
clout [. . .]  Without intellectual ammunition to defend them and to create
the context in which they can flourish, worthy projects and programmes
collapse.  They cannot exist in a vacuum."

Talk to you soon, on <vplen>.  And for those going to Milan -- participate
with verve ... and keep us posted!

Bram Dov Abramson
21 August 1998

---
   Bram Dov Abramson                   bram@tao.ca
   C.P. 48099 - Montreal Quebec - H2V 4S8 - Canada
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