FROM THE CUT STONE AGE TO THE INFORMATION SOCIETY AGE

OR

FROM THE RUPESTRAL CONTENTS TO THE ELECTRONIC CONTENTS

The economy saw, currently, a major upheaval as well at the planetary level, as regional and local generating a new reality and putting on the market the new concepts and ways of life. 

The knowledge economy, the Information Society, the Knowledge Society, and many modes of concepts development with futuristic resonance, will impregnate certainly our future reality like already made, in short time, by Internet, mobile telephony and other information and communication technologies (ICT). 

ICTs are the resultant of three sectors, distinct since long time:  telecommunication, audio-visual and data processing those allowed the Information Society development. 

On the benches of the School: 

I remember that in the time when we were on the School benches, there is more than two decades now, when they inculcated us the feats of the science famous men (Newton, Pascal, Einstein..... through their theorems and their formulas). One day, we asked our Greek teacher of mathematics; by pretexting that, all discovered that it is any more necessary for studying or researching.  He retorted then, with his Mediterranean air, taking his chalk and drawing an exponential curve and he commented on the cycles traversed by Homo sapiens:  the discovery of the stone, bronze and iron, the simple machines while passing by the industrial revolution and each one constituted an era that lasted several centuries.  For this reason, we identify the era of the cut stone, the iron era, the bronze era, etc. 

Our teacher turned over towards us and showed finger the dustbin, in the class corner, and asked while smiling, did you know that, Mr Poubelle invented it ?  We remained amazed, and he continued by asking who invented the video, the tape recorder and other more complicated accessories, which we used frequently at that time, and concluded that science and creation never stop and followed their courses into exponential, the great periods being packed and numbers of inventions being multiplying. 

At that, time to find an article or a book required a titanic and sustainable task of exploration and research; it was not at the end of a click like the one we do it currently during the digital revolution era.  It is necessary to underline, to conclude, that the two great inventions of the human generated a revolution in his thinking and communication mode are the pen and the computer, this last being only at its beginnings. 

The age of the great inventions: 

When somebody thought at that time that all discovered, and common people did not wrong, since a few decades before the president of the American commission of the inventions resigned of his station by affirming that all discovered (electricity, phone, plane, transistor, etc.). In addition, that was not necessary any more to assume this responsibility.  The man was unaware of that he attended an acceleration of the process that will become increasingly phenomenal. 

Moreover, for the anecdote the young person Bell, when he invented the phone for us, making our joys today, he shows it to the New York mayor.  This one believed at the beginning that it is a magic product or it is insanity.  Bell endeavored to explain that is an invention, it will upset the world and will make possible to communicate easily between people without having to move.  His interlocutor answered him, quite simply, that he was in good health and he can still move between the offices of his major state or through the city to see his fellow-citizens and consequently he did not need for this hardware.  Bell explained whereas it is an invention that will bring closer distant people of more than 80 miles !  The mayor reflects one moment then and answered him plainly (it is necessary to be in the moment context) which he did not know nobody at this distance! 

The communication reducing distances and the large village:

At the beginning, the world appeared vast and the infinite distances, it results in our ignorance certainly and the means of communication especially.  Was not we believed that, during the centuries, the world was infinite?  In the same way, won't we conclude one day that the universe is a village in its turn?  In addition, can't we conclude that in fact the means the communication reduce the distances and abolish the barriers? 

We go towards a world with destroyed distances, abolished barriers, and we evolve next a village, where the relations will be easier and the communication more convivial.  A village where people cross on the Net and can put themselves under discussion, to work together to share their knowledge and their good practices without having neither to move nor to have the same culture.  Indeed, it is not necessary any more to move or to travel to acquire a product, to have Information or to receive a teaching in a school being several distances from home, it is a reality and we must adapt to it now.  We evolve to the information society and towards the knowledge society, without knowing it perhaps, but we are conscious of the increasingly strong effect of globalization defining the state as the resultant of the tripartite:  Governance, civil society and private sector. 

The information omnipresence and the knowledge sharing will have to serve the equitable human society development and in the contrary case, the world will be shared in two great producers:  the first one of intelligence and equipment and the second one of energy and labour. 

How will be the world of tomorrow?  How will we communicate?  In the medium of all this expansion in information and knowledge, such questions do not have obvious answers and it is the perspicacity of the decision and the policy makers, which will to satisfy the people aspirations. 

Information is at the base of any development policy and the citizen constitutes its interest center. 

From the rupestral culture to the Net culture: 

Since its appearance on ground, the Homo sapiens showed his intelligence, which translated by his capacity to communicate it and to immortalize it through times and distances. In addition, the traceability of his existence can be putted forward, through his rupestral writings while passing by the papyruses and other supports, without forgetting the oral accounts of various civilizations to arrive to the paper, at the risk to give its place to the electronic content support. The last one making our contemporary exploits and which are shaping our culture towards another mode, or world, of the electronic culture.  The Net culture, the electronic contents are transforming our thinking mode. 

The support content of tomorrow will be, perhaps the ADN, the scientists advance that a coffee spoon can contain all information and the libraries of the whole world !  On the other hand, perhaps an extension of our memory according to our need, transplantation or stimulation of the two other thirds parts of our brain which we do not use yet !  We can release our imagination like our predecessors made because all starts as a dream that initiates thinking, in its turn and will become a research topic and which will be concretized one day. 

It is clear that the limit is so far to appear in the horizon and the cruising speed is not reached yet, perhaps, like Bossuet said ' after 10 000 years of observation, the human spirit is not exhausted.  He seeks until he can find until the infinite '.  However, with this speed the gap, and in particular the digital gap, risks to be longer and the digital illiterates became a reality, following the example of writing illiterates, being likely to become a stand in the way and slowing down the evolution and the development towards to the information society. 

The information society must touch all the fringes of the society geographically, socially and intellectually.  This should support and impel a dynamics change and development in order to avoid having a company with two speeds the connected one and the disconnected one. 

Where we are in all that? 

A strategy of telephony development was committed in Algeria by the authorities, at the end of last century, it is clear that the current situation could be reached five years ago since that, account held of the circumstances of the time, escaping nobody, this delay was recorded.  In 2000 the phone density was 6% and passed to 31 % in April 2005, an appreciable result, and the authorities project already an objective of 80 % to be reached from here 2010 accompanied by a project of 1 million PC (One PC by family).  It is optimistic certainly, but what is about connectivity, information access and electronic contents production?  A similar development strategy, with that of telephony, should be committed, for the development of the information society and the reduction of digital gap, by improving connectivity, the information access and the electronic contents production. 

Algeria has a telecommunication infrastructure comprising an optical fiber network with 2 backbones covering the whole of the country and a 100 % digital network phone which does not have anything to envy regarding to the developed countries. The Algerian citizens know well the environment of the administration, which about the commune or the court, and no comment about other sectors where the contact between citizen and governance exerted, it is the shock, and for the situation a short caricatured: 

It is like if there is an excellent road infrastructure and uses for displacement the primitive transport means. 

Civils servant forgotten by age handling their typewriters dusty and use practices costing government a monumental budget that no one can calculate (administrative paper, files, time of delay etc). But that the whole could be centralized around a digital card which can be used from any point of the country, it is utopian perhaps, but it is realizable and it is an occasion enabling us to reduce the digital gap like makes by several countries. Thus will reduce these interminable congestions in our large cities, and teaching will be good quality in the moved back places and the authorities will optimize the citizen management costs to use it in other development sectors, such as health, teaching, agriculture, etc. 

One is unaware of still the digital illiterates, and we knows less the quantity of electronic contents produced in the country and it is time to discuss and start to work on these topics to be able to start a policy of sustainable development and to engage effectively in the information society age. 

Mohamed Saad-laib

DG of DIDACTICA, ESMTI

Member of the world panel of the national experts of World Summit Award

Chairman of the project WSA, E-content Algeria