There's a great discussion going on at "Information Society: Voices from the South" is@dgroups.org, covering education, access and application of Internet tools in developing communities. One of the questions that most interests me is the one about how much the local language and the place matters.

If we consider the net as a communication tool and accept that the vast majority of our communication is both in our local language and within a fairly small geographical horizon within which our most important social, economic and political activity occurs.

The technology is able to facilitate, accelerate and archive that communication for many purposes, most of them benign. But it will only do that effectively if it is available to people when and where they need it (walking 5KM to a telecentre is not the answer), through an interface that they can use (if it doesn't support non-literate users it will fail), in a language that makes sense to them (must be local).

While it is a great thing that we can also use it to communicate with like minded, and alternatively minded people all round the world, and there are significant benefits in that, its greatest value, and sternest test comes in figuring out how to be relevant and worthwhile in our daily lives.

This applies both in poor and rich communities and there is increasing evidence, and discussion around the ways that Internet tools and services are being used to enrich and empower local, real-world communities.

I have some material that deals with these issues here

• Telecentres: How Did We Lose the Plot?
• How Can ICT Help Alleviate Poverty?
• Jhai Foundation Remote Villages Network
• ICT and Poverty: The San Bushmen (Waiting to go online)
• Communications Networks Access in Developing Countries (Waiting to go online)