MY question is: how do realize our human rights assisted by another and new human rights called the Internet?
PDHRE, People’s Movement for Human Right Learning is facilitating the learning of human rights as a way of life worldwide. .. We are developing with local inhabitants of various cities around the world Human Rights Cities including national the creation of Corps that will each out to every women , men, men youth and child for them to know and own human rights as relevant to their daily lives ..--move charity to dignity for all to belong in dignity in community with others.
Myself being an older person i can only rely on my intuition and some experience to say that if we know in depth of how to use the internet recognizing it as a basic human rights for access, outreach learning and most important dialogue , in 10 to 15 years all people of the world will choose to be guided by the holistic human rights framework towards meaningful economic and social transformation.
Thus saying the it is a human rights is very exciting as it a directly derived practically and metaphorically from the human rights to food education, housing , health and work at livable wages…--not to speak of being: a tool as well as a delivery system , and often as a guide that we should all enjoy and have access to human rights as a way of life. .
We need more young people who own this human right to think with us of how to have seven billion people join in a dialogue about the relevance of huamn rights to their lives.
Shulamith Koenig – Founding President, People’s Movement for Human Rights Learning. www.pdhre.org
Scandinavian countries lived and prospered in dark and cold for about 1000 years. Internet is here since 1980. They have proven to live without it.
What would be a right to decent life? Decent life has many aspects from eduction, health and living standard. Parts of education are computers and portion of health is medical knowledge and one of the elements of living standards is ability to communicate. If we look deeper into the meaning of decent life we can see that almost each aspect of it contains access to computers and internet.
I would not go that far and put internet as human rights, because simply the future may bring a better way to communicate than it is known now as internet.
What benefits could it bring to your region and the world as a whole?
Internet is the most powerful instrument to influence the opinion of people. We have see how Internet played pivotal role in Arab uprising. Moreover Internet can play major role in education, clean governance and as a major communication tool.
"Some don't even have shelter, not to mention education, so internet access has no meaning to them."
I don't agree with that.
There are many people in the world with no shelter, no education but very smart and with an inspirational wish and will of learning to make their lives better.
There is a young man in Malawi, Africa, (I don't remember his name, unfortunately) who wanted to study but couldn't afford 80 USD to pay for his studies. This didn't stop him.
He spent four years in the library studying, doing research to develop a windmill. And he did it. After four years of R&D American journalists went to interview him. They took him to the U.S. When he was asked if he didn't know about Google he asked "what kind of animal is a google?". They gave him a computer with Internet connection. Doing a simple Google search he found everything what took him four years of his life in the library to research, just a click away.
Don't you think that man in Malawi would have been very grateful to have a computer and Internet access? Don't you think Internet access would have had a very important meaning in his life, saving him four years of hard work?
There is a Chinese proverb that says: Give a man a fish and he will eat for one day. Teach him to fish and he will eat for his whole life.
In my distant past, I had looked at teaching as a career, no so much as 'Educate the kiddies' side of it but I saw massive potential for doing things differently.
However fortune often dictates other routes for us to follow (I ended up as an engineer), not to mention the endless & mostly irrelevant paperwork required.
I see a lot of irony in current teaching methodology, certainly on the University side, where the whole goal of a University is to promote research and sharing of materials, and yet the teaching materials are 'closed off' and distributed under a strict NDA/Copyright system.
I would really like to see some sort of open material, along the lines of how Linux was developed, the universities could still charge for the 1:1 interactions and supervision of the dissertations/thesis/exams.
It is somewhat Ironic that to get a 'proper' education you have to be rich or at least richer than much of general population, certainly in the U.K that has taken a turn for the worst with the massive hiking of University fees, even for online courses.
And yes I see your point about online materials or virtual environments, but it is just not radical or far reaching enough, specifically because there is very little interaction or "get your ass outside and learn something", I get the feeling that it does not instill one of the key requirements into the students, and that would be "promoting inquisitive minds"
The Insect/flower side of it was just something I had my mind on, specifically related to automatic Identification of materials for student field biology (I had a bee in my bonnet about the way Facebook wastes the technology on privacy abuses).
"Hi Susan, is Internet access in Finland included in people's taxes, like education and healthcare, or is it an additional cost?"
The point of making broadband Internet access a legal right was to build the infrastructure necessary to make it available even above the Arctic Circle and to make it very accessible so anyone can easily pay for it for a very little monthly payment.
You can get broadband Internet access for as little as 9.90 EUR = 14 USD = 8,75 GBP. That is less than a ticket to a movie theater and less than two drinks in a pub. And it's going to get even cheaper.
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars (not counting Libya) cost the U.S. $14 billion a month. That is $466 million a day, or almost $20 million an hour.
Wouldn't you agree that if a government has that amount of money to spend in weapons, killing people and inducing nations to hate and revange it would do much better using the money to build infrastructure to make Internet access available in every corner in the country?
"Yet the schools still have to be funded because everybody has a right to education and a better life."
Today we can't say that elementary education is enough to get a competitive job and build a future with a good quality of life. People need to have access to free higher education (just like in Finland), that is giving people the right to education.
"And if we come up with a way to give everybody access, who's going to pay for their hardware to get on the internet if they can't afford it?"
You can find really cheap netbooks in the market, you can find second hand computers everywhere, there are people giving their old computers away for free, you can find what you need if you want to find it. Hardware is not as expensive as it used to be. Have you checked prices lately?
Some schools are giving eReaders to all the students. Of course they need Internet access. Do you think the students who live in rural areas without Internet access are happy surviving knowing they are way behind in chances of getting a good job in the future because they won't have the education and knowledge needed?
"How are we going to pay to ensure everybody has access to the internet? A "human right", hardly. More focus should be on the main elements of food, shelter and education."
Well, here I agree that the U.S. first should find a way to give people more basic human rights like food, shelter, education and healthcare. Sad but true, the basic rights are not covered in the U.S. Therefore, the U.S. can't afford giving the right to Internnet access to its people.
Some European countries are just some steps ahead. It's good and inspirational to know about them. Maybe some other big nations stop and think for a moment and decide to work in fulfilling more basic human rights, like the aforementioned, before moving on to populate the space with space stations and build a colony in Mars scheduled to be due by 2030 by NASA.
Yes, that's right. I would love to see other nations follow the example of a country that has reached this level of technological advancement making it possible for citizens to enjoy a good quality of life.
Whenever people ask me "who is going to pay for the infrastructure" I immediately think that the money that some countries waste in wars could be used in building the infrastructure and more.
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars (not counting Libya) cost the U.S. $14 billion a month. That is $466 million a day, or almost $20 million an hour. Wouldn't you agree that if a government has that amount of money to spend in weapons, killing people and inducing nations to hate and revange it would do much better using the money to build infrastructure to make Internet access available to every corner in the country?
I understand when a gvernment doesn't have the means to give more to the citizens, but in my book if a country spend such amount of money in wars there is no valid excuse for not improving education, healthcare and anything that would help the wellbeing of the citizens.
Also, as ebooks and online libraries are becoming more common and eReaders and tablets are found at lower prices there is a need for Internet access for basic reading. When will people understand this?
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Join EBN contributor Jennifer Baljko on Thursday August 23, 2012, at 11:00 a.m. EST for a live chat on how electronic manufacturers in Thailand have shored up their supply chain to reduce the impact of future natural disasters.
Peter Drucker famously said "Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window." Yet in the razor's-edge world of electronics—with a lean supply chain and just-in-time demands—the need to know the future is vital.
You've heard the saying "the No. 1 supply chain risk is your people." That hasn't always been the case. But today's complex global supply chain requires a new type of multitalented employee. It's one who understands, finance, marketing, economics, is savvy with technology, graceful with relationships and can think analytically.
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Brian Fuller, editor-in-chief of EBN, will lead a 60-minute Avnet Velocity panel discussion that will ask and answer these and other questions swirling around today's supply-chain talent challenges.
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