Culture Mondo (http://www.culturemondo.org/) is an international non-profit cultural portal organization, the aim of which is to encourage countries to digitize their unique cultural property so it can be shared with other countries. It also pays attention to interaction between society and the Internet era, digital human rights, the digital gap and other issues.

For this year’s Culture Mondo round table meeting people responsible for and working for more than 20 digital cultural portals in the UK, US, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, France, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, India, Bangladesh and Luxemburg came to Taiwan. The author was very proud to take part in the round table meeting. Below, I will share the main points of the meeting with anyone who cares about culture and the development of the Internet.

 Topic 1：Global citizen action and society in the Internet age

In the world today, because of the vibrant development of Internet technology information in the free world can be transmitted to every corner of the world in an instant and knowledge continually circulated.

For example, Mr. David Sasaki runs the non-profit Global Voice portal. A netizen in Taiwan took photographs of the “UFO” buildings near Sanzhi and posted it on Global Voice (http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/09/03/taiwan-the-flying-saucer-houses-will-be-torn-down/). They circulated and eventually appeared in the Liberty Times (http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2008/new/dec/21/today-show1.htm). During the terror attacks on Mumbai, before the situation was clear and media was not yet on the scene reporting the story, many people on the scene who had digital cameras and computers quickly posted what they filmed on-line, supplying it to mainstream media or providing it as an unofficial on-the-spot record of events. (http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/11/26/india-blasts-gunfire-and-terror-in-mumbai/) If Internet technology is effectively used individuals or groups whose voices were rarely heard through traditional media system have a place to express themselves on-line.

Attending experts believed that in the future Internet era the definition of national borders will be very different to the traditional definition. Traditional borders are a spatial concept based on geography and culture. Borders in the Internet era include those established when countries such as China, North Korea, Cuba and Zimbabwe block the Internet (the BBC website cannot be fully accessed in China http://news.bbc.co.uk/chinese/trad/hi/newsid_7790000/newsid_7796500/7796561.stm). Also, language barriers cannot be ignored. After all, if we don’t understand another language we won’t usually go and search for or browse websites that use this language, therefore, in the future Internet community it will be more important to overcome the language obstacle than traditional spatial national borders. The top 10 Internet languages by user population today are English, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Spanish, Japanese, French, German, Arabic, Portuguese, Korean and Italian (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm). These rankings can be used as reference when establishing foreign language versions of websites in the future. However, the choice of language should still be related to the language of the target users. If a lot of money is spent on establishing an Arabic website but the contents and services of the website don’t appeal to Arabic speakers then this is a misuse of money and a waste.

The digital gap also had the attention of participants. The existence of the Internet gives people the power to change their lives, even the world; however, around the world there are many people without access to the Internet. When we use the Internet and eulogize the Internet era we should also consider our responsibly as global village citizens. For example, a team of Japanese agricultural experts helped set up Internet and weather forecasting and monitoring facilities in the Himalayas, allowing the weather to be recorded over a long period of time for the reference of scholars and weather forecast information also to be passed to local people, helping them decide when is the most suitable time to plant crops.     Consequently, when promoting Internet and digital thinking in non-urban areas, most important is providing Internet service solutions according to local needs. Kafui Prebbie from Ghana said that unless Western mainstream society makes the Internet available to weaker ethnic groups around the world so their culture can be sustainably managed Internet technology will be just a plaything of the First World rich.

Will the development of Internet technology and the ever-closer links between this technology and business result in a “big brother” controlling every aspect of our lives in future? In Europe and the US an increasing number of Internet users are refusing to use Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’ Internet services and have begun to have doubts about blogs too. In addition to anti-trust reasons, quite a number of people think that Google’s festival bookmarks or the unlimited writing and psychological journey of blogs are a serious intrusion into people’s privacy. The rapid economic development of Taiwan and South Korea and other Asia countries was driven by the information industry and made people’s lives more convenient and comfortable. Perhaps because the information industry was like “parents who provide food and clothing”, helping improve their standard of living, people in Taiwan are not as critical of the Internet society as people are in Europe and the US.

Vladimir Skok, a Canadian academic said summing up the meeting “What’s most important is passing on the results of the efforts over the three day meeting to those who were not present or were unable to use the Internet to express their views”. How to disseminate the crystals of human wisdom through the Internet to people without forming a new controlled system is an important topic for Internet and digital culture workers to address today. (To be continued)