| pedro lopez casuso on 17 Jan 2001 00:12:10 -0000 |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
| [nettime-lat] RV: [media-news] In Mexico, Net Not a Priority |
-- ---------- De: George Antunes <[email protected]> Para: [email protected] Asunto: [media-news] In Mexico, Net Not a Priority Fecha: mart., 16 ener 2001 03:40 pm In Mexico, Net Not a Priority by Julia Scheeres Wired News Jan. 16, 2001 How do you digitize your country when you can't even supply clean water and electricity to a large slice of the population? That's a major issue facing Mexico at the dawn of the 21st century, but one that has received surprisingly little attention from the Mexican government. Only 10 percent of the Mexican population has access to telephones and 5 percent to computers. But bridging the digital divide was not a hot topic in the last presidential elections, nor is it a major item on President Vicente Fox's agenda. In fact, when PRI candidate Francisco Labastida announced during the campaign that his goal was to make sure every Mexican child had access to the Internet and computers, he was roasted by the national media. "The schools are adobe, they don't have paper, pencils or books, so it's preposterous to talk about the Internet," said Antonio Puertas, senior editor of Punto-Com, a magazine that tracks technology matters in Latin America. Since Labastida was blasted, the subject has basically been dropped, Puertas said. Functionaries refer obliquely to "incorporating new technology" and toss about ideas such as creating an e-ministry or an e-czar, but no "big plan" has been mapped out. Attempts by Wired News to discuss the topic with Fox's press secretary were fruitless. Puertas believes that Mexico's technological evolution won't occur at the behest of government at all. "I would expect that (Fox) will leave the job to be done by the private sector, not by the government," Puertas added. Indeed, Mexican nonprofits such as the Union of Businesspeople for Technology in Education have managed to pry donations from the hands of billionaire multinationals -- such as Microsoft -- with some success. But on a larger scale, Mexico's future may well reside in free software as well as hardware donations, said Gary Chapman, director of the 21st Century Project, a nonprofit research and education program on science and technology policy based at the University of Texas at Austin. The standard MS Office price tag is $250. It would take the average Mexican -- earning $5 a day -- almost 2 months to buy it. Chapman calculates it would cost about $300 million to outfit Mexico's notoriously under-funded schools with Microsoft applications -- the same amount Microsoft claims to lose to piracy in Mexico each year. The rampant proliferation of cracked software -- and the fear that international companies would choose to do business elsewhere -- precipitated the passage of a law last year that makes it easier to prosecute piracy crimes. But many observers believe that with so many corrupt officials who can be paid to look the other way, the law is largely unenforceable. "Open source software would solve that (piracy) problem," Chapman said. "You can get all the functionality without paying the software fees." In fact, Red Escolar, a project that aspires to wire every Mexican school to the Internet, uses free applications Linux and Gnome on its computers, he said. "Mexico could become an example for other countries around the world," Chapman said. ======================================================= George Antunes Voice: 713-743-3923 Political Science Dept Fax: 713-743-3927 University of Houston Internet: [email protected] Houston, TX 77204 or [email protected] Redistribution of Media-News content, without on-air credit to the list and an on-air thank-you to those who contributed items that were used, is strictly prohibited. Post message: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] _______________________________________________ nettime-lat mailing list [email protected] http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-lat