Melita Zajc

World Summit of Information Society brought the information and communication technologies to the focus of attention of all humanity. The aim of using ICT for development and for the implementation of Millennium goals is echoing the ideas that ICT have the potential of bringing an end to the controversies of free market economy and even the hopes that - because with ICT, knowledge and not capital is decisive for creation of wealth - the knowledge society can provide an exit from class society. Yet, as the first footnote to the Civil Society Declaration to the WSIS (adopted on December 8, 2003) states - there is no single information, communication or knowledge society. Apart from general access and common standards, shared ideals and universal principles - the most important are the differences. Actually, the one is not possible without the other. That is the nature of technology - however universal it can only be used individually.

The reason we tend to neglect this lies in the simple fact that technology itself tends to be invisible. Anthropologists of technology claim that we use technology as black box. Which means that technology could only be generally accepted when people can use it without being aware of it. Internet will be everywhere only when it will not be visible anywhere, said an expert a decade ago and another one claimed that the way we use computers is very much like we would go to the cinema to watch a movie and have to watch the projector instead. As I write this, the major global TV network advertises its online services by claiming that to access Internet, one generally needs more than 100 buttons but with them you only need three. A simple press on the button is a common metaphor for public acceptance of (new) technology, "you press the button and we do the rest," was, for example, the headline promoting first photo cameras at the end of 19th Century.

The black box phenomenon does not only exist in everyday life but also in the conceptions -from prevailing visions of society, technology is systematically excluded. The notion of "information society" brings technology to the foreground, yet the question remains - how could WSIS avoid repeating the mistake of contributing to the a-technical notion of society and ensure that the talk of technology does not just serve to masking reality? How to avoid staying half way, acknowledging the importance of technology but not also the consequences of this acknowledgment?

Recent anthropological studies prove that - be it in the case of Mesopotamia or Silicon Valley - the idea that innovations first start in an isolated center and than diffuse evenly over the globe is wrong. It is the other way around - innovations, springing up at random in a uniformly inhabited space and spreading at a constant rate tend to collect at the center. Among several explanations, from geography and the location of resources or infrastructures, the main one proves to be the production and reproduction of technical skills. The use of technology implies knowledge and skills. Technical skills are not forms of knowledge, they cannot be written down nor transmitted by speech, they cannot exist apart from permanent practice. One can not learn how to drive a car from the book or in a lecture room but by doing it. As in the proverb, practice makes perfect. The production and reproduction of skills is a social function that takes place in identifiable social units. These, skill-producing units, groups of experts, are basic for the use of technology. In Slovenia, at least two groups of experts were crucial for the use of ICT: one around the main research institute (IJS) and the other around digital media laboratory (Ljudmila). As centers where creative uses of Internet, www and ICT in general were developing during the 1990's, they were particular, local response to the fact that innovation inevitably introduces inequalities that increase with time- they ensured that these inequalities didn't take place (yet).

WSIS is performing a huge task by promoting the idea of information society, but it is crucial to recognize that promoting technology is not enough, because this promotion itself can stimulate the concentration of innovations and increase the inequalities. What is needed is the promotion of active use of technology, and that is the endeavor of the World Summit Award, a project dedicated to the selection of the world's best electronic content. The selection is performed on the local basis, within United Nations' member states, it has a form of competition within categories and among locally produced content.

The importance of direct stimulation of creative use of technology has yet another reason. With the use of technology, even in forms of printing press or broadcasting, the universal principle of the freedom of speech undergoes a significant deformation. A relative complexity of the use of technology reduces the freedom of speech only to the freedom of consumption while the production - freedom of expression in its active form - becomes a privilege of the few (media owners, journalists,.). Various more or less appreciated supplements - letters to the editor or public service broadcasting - just point to this basic flaw more clearly.

Therefore, it is simply imperative that when claiming the freedom of speech within Information Society, this is not in any case modeled after the so-called old media. For this reason, the World Summit Award plays a special role within the World Summit of Information Society. By bringing local content to the global information society, it is promoting the production of content that is a model of active exercise of the principle of freedom of speech. Production of electronic content is where freedom of speech should be fought for in the 21st Century, because with the development of the ICT this is going to be our main means of expression - the better we master the production of e-content, the better our voices will be heard.

Melita Zajc
Melita Zajc, Head of Research at RTV Slovenia. Combining editorial work and research in the field of media, she was editor of the magazine Mladina and head of Arts and Culture Department at RTV Slovenia (public service broadcasting company of Slovenia). She holds PhD in anthropology and philosophy, and also studied Visual Media at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna where curated international series of lectures Theories of the Visual. She is author of many international publications ("Keep Him on The Phone, Human Body in the Realm of Technology" in Ars Electronica Facing the Future, MIT 1999), lectures at the ISH, Ljubljana, is Member of the Supervisory Board of Slovene Film Found and President of the Expert Commission on Media and Audiovisual Culture at the Slovene Ministry of Culture. In 2003 she was a national curator for Slovenia and a grand jury member of the World Summit Award and is also a member of steering committee of the WSA initiative, the Global Alliance for Bridging the Digital Divide, GABDD.