Censorship and Access to the Wide Web World
My present interest is to help educate children in Vietnam and especially in remote villages. The thrust of the help is not so much teaching English, but to help in English pronunciation and communication through the internet. As was cited in a number of chapters of Literate Lives, those without computer access are less likely to be as literate as students with Web access.
Looking for subjects for my research paper I have come up with some possibilities: Is accessibility to the World Wide Web important to literacy in Asian Countries such as Vietnam and China? Is accessibility to the WWW more important than basic educational tools such as books, pencils, and paper? How does accessibility to the WWW affect literacy and politics? And, How is China and Vietnam’s present position of political censorship affect education.
Chapter 10 of Writing Space by Bolter titled ‘Writing Culture’ cites, “The Web becomes for us a metaphor for ways in which we function in our various communities” (203). Bruns, in BLOGGS, WIKIPEDI, SECOND LIFE, and BEYOND, in Chapter 13, Educating Produsers, Produsing Education, Produsage and the Academy speaks of “A casual collapse of established hierarchies and institutions is the typical outcome of a paradigm shift” (344). He is emphasizing the importance of the power of the WWW in our changing relationship with education in our communities the WWW. Without access to the WWW, then those without the access are at a disadvantage of keeping up educationally. He goes on to say that “An explicit embrace of produsage principle by educators is likely to increase the permeability of educational institutions, and teachers and learners will come to work more closely with produser communities in the wider knowledge space beyond academia” (350). Bolter in Chapter 10, speaks of the American culture that encourages the individual over the state community. Because Americans are freer they can associate with whoever they wish and what community they choose. Brun says, The (WWW) network is displacing the hierarchy” (204). He suggests the WWW has become sites for highly mediated versions of community…that allow individuals to talk back and talk to each other” (204).
In regulating or government censorship as China and Vietnam, are presently doing with Google and Facebook, Fred Rheingold in Virtual Community (1944), talks about liberating himself on a political level as well as a personal level. He goes on to state “The technology that makes virtual communities possible to bring enormous leverage to ordinary citizens…and most important political leverage” (pp.4-5). Bruns goes on to say “the Internet and Web as enabling new forms of community or democratic empowerment, there remains the key problem that the technology is not universally available” (205).
Both books emphasized the importance of the WWW in education, and politics.
