Publishers - web: www.juta.co.za - phone: +27 21 797 5101

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Dear TAD friends,

Attached please find the latest technology report from the Centre for

Lifelong Learning at Technikon SA. Below that, I have inserted the latest

version of SADECCON News. First, though, there is a notice about a new

publication that may interest some TAD

participants.

Regards

Neil Butcher

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NEW FROM UCT PRESS!

THE SEGREGATED INFORMATION HIGHWAY by Yusuf Sayed

ARE SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES IN TUNE WITH THE DEMANDS OF THE 21ST CENTURY?

In his groundbreaking new book, published by UCT Press in March 1998, Yusuf

Sayed examines the ways in which higher educational institutions in the

Western Cape are facing up to the challenge presented by the Information

Superhighway.

In the age of a global information economy, understanding how to find

information efficiently and use it critically is vital to professional and

personal survival. Now more than ever, information literacy is a crucial

part of any educational process and

higher educational institutions worldwide are having to evolve new teaching

and learning methods to accommodate these changing patterns.

THE SEGREGATED INFORMATON HIGHWAY provides a unique overview of the status

of information literacy among students at universities and technikons in the

Western Cape. It is the first study of its kind in South Africa and the

first on this scale internationally.

The book is packed with statistical material insights into the current

educational environment in South Africa and provides a valuable model for

similar studies. It is highly recommended for researchers, librarians and

academics - especially those working in African institutions.

THE SEGREGATED INFORMATION HIGHWAY is selling at R79.95 and you can order it

**********************************

Report on Selected Technologies

May 1998

Technology advances

If you have a PC with 16 or 32meg of RAM memory and are considering

buying a new one sometime next year, keep in mind that 64 and 128meg

SDRAM (synchronis dynamic random access memory) memory chips are now

being provided. Japan's NEC Corporation has begun shipping samples

of the new chips and will begin shipping some 600 chips per month

from August 1998. While they may be in short supply at present, if

you are serious about your next computer, you may want to get hold of

this new size of RAM.

As previously reported, companies have been offering free e-mail

addresses on the Internet which can be accessed from any Internet

terminal worldwide. Now joining the ranks of search engine and

e-mail providers is Netscape Communications. The on-line search

directory, Excite is expected to pay Netscape Communications some

US$70 million to provide them with search engine facilities for the

expanded Net Centre. Excite expects to recoup its expenses by

selling advertising on the pages its delivers to people using the

Telephone companies are jittery about the possibility of Internet

telephony eating into their profit margins. At this stage Internet

telephony remains something that is used by very few people

compared to the standard voice networks. It also requires a much

higher level of user skill. The reliability and clarity of Internet

telephony is still no where near the standards to which we have

become accustomed in most developing and developed countries.

If you find you are still being troubled by cellular telephones that

ring during meetings, in theatres and lecture rooms, a product

called C-Guard may be the solution. This product is currently being

beta tested in Israel and the manufacturers hope to launch the

product by the end of the year. The product is designed to

eliminate all cellphone traffic in designated areas where you would

not want cellphones ringing and causing a disturbance. A

low-powered signal is transmitted to the hand-set which prevents any

effective communication with the cellphone base-station, rendering

the device inoperative.

Computers are becoming a normal development toy for young children.

IBM and Rubbermaid have teamed up to make a toddler-proof PC aimed

at the daycare centre and pre-school market. The PC is built into a

colourful desk that can seat two small children. The manufacturers

confirm that the insides at this stage conform to an IBM PC 300GL

computer running on a Pentium processor with internal CD ROM drive.

Standard is a 2 gigabit hard-drive and 14" colour monitor. All

wires and damageable items are well out of reach of the children.

If you are responsible for a computer system or local area network,

you should take a careful look at the protection you have in place

to prevent vandals from attacking you through the Internet. Recent

attacks have included the Pentagon (the US Defence Department's

network) and the network of scientists in India who were allegedly

responsible for the recent atomic bomb tests. Much of the hacking

is done by bright, bored school children looking for something to

stretch their imagination and skills. One must remember though that

more serious hackers are beginning to emerge around the world who

may have different agendas than the simple satisfaction of getting

into your system. If in doubt, call in a reputable computer support

company and find out about system security and firewalls.

While a number of satellite-based telecomm-unications projects are

underway, low orbiting crafts are still being designed. Angel

Technologies based in St Louis, USA, is developing high-speed

telecommunications based on an aircraft that will fly above cities.

The aeroplane is designed to have belly-mounted antenna to provide

two-way video-conferencing and other high bandwidth data

transmission. Transmission speeds are said to be in region of 16

gigabits per second or some 100 times faster than existing

satellites. The company's management have said that three aeroplanes

could provide a 24 hour service to as many as 500 terminals.

Women on the Web

When some people think about women being on the Internet, they tend

to think of the X-rated sites and people who display more than their

web-pages. According to ZDNet's Anchor Desk, women account for 40%

of the on-line population and should comprise 60% by 2005. They say

women are far more task-oriented on the web than men and will

typically look for information that can save them time and effort.

Marketers are beginning to realise this and target women who make

70% of the retail purchases via the Internet. A survey conducted by

women.com showed that of the 1 300 women surveyed, 48% wanted more

control over their finances. ZDNet reports that women are

networking as never before and circumventing more of the traditional

You may be interested to know it is estimated there are now 119

million Internet users worldwide (NAU Internet surveys) of which

about two thirds live in North America. Four out of every five

web-pages are said to be in English which has become the unofficial

language of the Internet. Its expected that the rest of the world

will pass North America in number of users later in 1998. However,

the number of web-servers will remain dominant in North America for

several years.

With all the growth of women on the Internet, it may not be a

surprise that "girl-games" have doubled in sales between 1996 and

1997 from 26 million to 57 million. A game design company

specialising in games for girls, says that girls want characters

they can relate to and story lines that are relevant to their lives.

Girls do not seem to be too interested in the violent and

competitive games boys have been playing for years as they find them

rather boring.

Microsoft

The battle lines are drawn. On the one side we have more than twenty

state attorneys in the United States filing anti-trusts suits

against Microsoft, along with a number of other companies who are

also suing Microsoft in their own capacity. On the other side,

twenty-six computer industry executives, including the Chairman on

Intel Corporation, are trying to persuade the US Department of

Justice not to block the planned release of Microsoft Windows 98

Operating System. There is also talk of Intel being charged by the

US Government under their anti-trust legislation. Critics say that

no manufacturer can afford to harm their relationship with

Microsoft. If Microsoft writes to a company asking them to send a

letter to the US Department of Justice, some feel that manufacturers

would find it very difficult not to do as expected. The latest

expectations of Microsoft by the US Government include:

- stop forcing PC makers to include Internet Explorer with Windows

98, or alternately ship Netscape's browser alongside Explorer.

- stop forcing ISPs and content providers to promote Internet Explorer to

the exclusion of rival browsers.

- give PC makers the right to replace the Windows startup screen

Micosoft argues that the lawsuit will hurt consumers and ultimately

will fail in court. The legal battles could go on for years and sap

much of much of Microsoft's financial resources and energies. The

case has become so important that even President Bill Clinton of the

US made a statement. He stated that he fully supported the

Department of Justice and would not want to comment on any matter of

substance under its jurisdiction.

Microsoft's biggest problem will no doubt be to prove whether or not

there is any truth in the allegations that it is an illegal

monopoly. Evidence is said to be provided from internal Microsoft

documents that allege that the company tried to conspire with

Netscape to divide the market of Internet browsers in 1995. When

Netscape apparently refused to go along with Microsoft's plan, the

real battle began. Allegations are now being made of how Microsoft

has been trying to eliminate Netscape's browser from being used by

major companies. All in all, from a user's perspective, it would be

preferable for Microsoft to concentrate more of their energy on

making their products more stable and reliable so that its operating

system did not crash as frequently as it seems to do in a normal

working day.

Feedback

If you have a comment, request or suggestion on this report, please

e-mail it to Paul West at: pgwest@ibm.net

Regards

Paul West

****************************

______________________________________________________

S A D E C C O N N E W S

Newsletter of the Southern African Development, Culture

and

Communication Network

________________________________________________________

Volume Number

1998

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Edited by Charles Malan and Arlene

Grossberg

________________________________________________________

C O N T E N T S

A NATIONAL INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION INFRASTRUCTURE

(NICI) STRATEGY FOR NAMIBIA PLANNED AT WORKSHOP

NEXUS DATABASE PRESENTS NEW RESEARCHERS

NETWORKING AND CONFERENCES

NEW JOURNAL WILL FOCUS ON AFRICAN EXPERIENCES

ONLINE CONFERENCE WILL DISCUSS TECHNOLOGY SUPPORTED LEARNING

SOUTH AFRICAN YOUTH GET THEIR OWN WEB-BASED INFORMATION SERVICE AND

NETWORKS

SASCA CONFERENCE WILL LOOK AT SOUTHERN AFRICA,

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE 21ST CENTURY

********************************************************

A NATIONAL INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION INFRASTRUCTURE

(NICI) STRATEGY FOR NAMIBIA PLANNED AT WORKSHOP

* Background

The Government of the Republic of Namibia has decided to embark on a

strategic process for the further development of the country's

national information and communication infrastructure (NICI). For

his purpose it was decided to use the African Information Society

Initiative (AISI) as a frame of reference.

To start the process, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting

organised a workshop in Windhoek on 11-13 May 1998. It was attended

by a range of international stakeholders, including no less than four

of SADECCON's management team. They were Prof. Ben Fouche, who

organised the workshop, and Profs. Robert Agunga, Stanford

Mukasa and Charles Malan. Some excerpts from the

statement of advice to the Minister follow below.

* Some considerations

- the increasing impact of globalisation and the convergence of the

mass media, telecommunication and information technology on the

social, economic and spiritual well-being of citizens, and the

prosperity of organisations, nations and regions,

- the need and priority of industrialised and developing countries

alike to craft and implement strategies to build globally competitive

knowledge-based societies.

* Some recommendations

* Process: The purpose of the process is to build an equitable,

sustainable and internationally competitive information society in

Namibia.

* The institutional, policy, legislative and regulatory

framework

1. The institutional framework refers to the roles of different

stakeholder groups such as government, the private sector,

non-governmental and community-based organisations, academia, civil

society and the international community and the institutions through

which they interact and collaborate.

2. The policy, legislative and regulatory framework refers to the

web of applicable policies, laws, regulations and executing

institutions and mechanisms that collectively provide the framework

action by different participants in this field.

3. The role of government is to provide leadership in establishing

and facilitating an enabling and incentifying framework for the

actions of other participants. This framework should provide for

strong and independent regulator.

4. Policy should be directed at the effective utilisation of NICI

to address inter alia the following priorities:

- the development of the local market for ICT services and products;

- the development and support to the local ICT industry;

- economic growth through value addition;

- the eradication over time of existing disparities in access to

information and opportunities between different sectors of society,

notably rural communities

- human resource capacity building

- the establishment of security mechanisms for the prevention of

intrusion by unauthorised access, hackers and viruses.

5. Policy should reflect the impact of technology and globalisation

on

- the protection of intellectual property rights, information

products and services;

- the right of access to public information;

- the affordability and availability of information generated by the

public sector;

- issues connected with the transborder flow of information;

- information privacy and security.

* Technological infrastructure

1. Government should foster the spread and use of information

infrastructure through existing structures and the introduction of

appropriate incentives eg. tax-reforms, soft loans, etc.

2. One way of extending services to rural communities which is

increasingly used worldwide is the establishment of 'telecentres' or

multi-purpose community information centres providing access to

elephone, fax, internet and information services. These telecentres

should be adapted to the local context and could be developed and

linked to existing infrastructures such as schools, post-offic

libraries and the community centres.

* Information resources (content and applications)

1. In this area the major issue is, on the one hand to ensure

affordable and easy access to global information and on the other

hand to assure the generation, utilisation and commercialisation,

are applicable, of local information and knowledge resources.

2. Sectoral applications such as tele-education, electronic

delivery of government services, electronic commerce for the large,

small, medium and micro economic sectors of industry, tele-health,

c should be prioritised according to national objectives and

introduced as pilot projects. Such projects should be monitored,

assessed and reviewed on the basis of experience to ensure

sustainability and cost effective replicability.

* Human resource capacity building

1. Whereas technological infrastructure has traditionally been

regarded as the most critical component of the NICI, leaders and

experts worldwide increasingly recognise human resource capacity

development as potentially the most crucial constraint in the

effective deployment of NICI to build sustainable information

societies.

2 Therefore the Namibian government should draw up a national

education and training programme in the ICT area on two levels:

firstly on the level of research and development, to be able to build

p knowledge on how to create and implement effective local

infrastructures and technologies and relevant local content; secondly

on the level of education and training to empower Namibian citizens

make effective use of these ICTs.

* Specific recommendations

1. Government should take the lead in devising and implementing a

strategy to address the year 2000 compliance issue in a coherent way

in conjunction with all stakeholders

2. In order to provide the supporting infrastructure for human

resource capacity building it should be considered to

establish an "Information and Communication Infrastructure Resource

Network" in partnership with interested international organisations.

The network would provide research, development, training, pilot

implementation, and impact analysis capacity in support of the

National Information and Communication Infrastructure.

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NEXUS DATABASE PRESENTS NEW RESEARCHERS

NETWORKING AND CONFERENCES

NEXUS News Flashes

NEW DATABASE !!! - Researchers Networking Database is

Nexus has also added 500 NEW CONFERENCES to the TALK

For a QUICK browse

1. Click on the "TALK" icon

2. Click on the Select terms button next to the

DISCIPLINE entry box 3. Select the appropriate

disciplines by clicking in the boxes and then Click on

the PASTE BUTTON 4. Click on the SEARCH NOW BUTTON

This will provide you with a list of conferences.

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NEW JOURNAL WILL FOCUS ON AFRICAN EXPERIENCES

Contours, a new, multidisciplinary journal exploring the

experiences of people of African descent all over the

world, invites submissions for its premier issues.

Contours will publish refereed scholarly articles,

fiction, poetry, interviews, and societal and cultural

commentaries. The journal will publish scholarly

articles from disciplines as diverse as sociology,

political science, history, anthropology, and

psychology; art, film, music, literary, and cultural

criticism; and medicine and the health sciences.

Suggested deadline for submissions is August 1, 1998;

later submissions will be considered for Volume Two.

Contours will be published three times a year by Indiana

University Press and is supported by the African and

African-American Studies program and the history

department at Duke University. To learn more or to

submit manuscripts (four copies), contact: Contours,

Duke University, Box 90719, 121-J Carr Building, Durham,

NC 27708, USA; (919) 660-3197; fax: (919) 660-3198;

e-mail: dgaspar@acpub.duke.edu.

--------------------

Lynda Horn, Assistant Editor, Contours

llhorn@acpub.duke.edu

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ONLINE CONFERENCE WILL DISCUSS TECHNOLOGY SUPPORTED LEARNING

Online Educa Berlin

4th International Conference on Technology Supported

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SOUTH AFRICAN YOUTH GET THEIR OWN WEB-BASED INFORMATION

SERVICE AND NETWORKS

* YOUTH INFORMATION SERVICE

The National Youth Commission (NYC) on 16 June 1998

launched a free information service to provide young

people with information regarding HIV/Aids, career

development and youth rights. The information will be

available via a national toll-free line or the Internet.

Deputy Minister in Thabo Mbeki's office, Essop Pahad,

answered the first calls. Commission project manager

Max van der Wath said the service's database would be

progressively expanded so it could respond to a wider

range of issues and queries from the youth. The toll

This site is designed to network Southern African youth

organisations and youth workers, and provide resources

that will be of use to South Africans involved in youth

work.

Please check this site out, and add your details by

filling in the on-line form, or sending an e-mail to:

webmaster@youth.co.za

with the details of your organisation and/or resource.

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SASCA CONFERENCE WILL LOOK AT SOUTHERN AFRICA,

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE 21ST CENTURY

You are herewith cordially invited to the 22nd Annual

Congress of the South African Society of Cultural

Anthropologists. The congress will be held from 10-11

September 1998 at Unisa Park, Irene (Pretoria) .

The closing date for the submission of titles is 15 July

1998. Papers should be submitted no later than 30

August 1998.

THEMES

African Renaissance: Challenges and realities

(Government and politics; education; health; business;

mining and industry; development; identity; etc.)

SASCA and the 21st Century (Management;

research; education; marketing; practice; etc.)

Development partnerships: Southern Africa

(Donor agencies [national and international];

capacity building; empowerment; public-private partnerships; etc.)

Digital technology and the Southern African future

Cyber space; Eduweb; distance enculturation/

education; global dimensions, values and identity; etc.)

Natural resources, sustainable development and the

human factor (Indigenous systems of knowledge;

property rights [intellectual,

real, immaterial]; people and nature; values and

cosmology; etc.)

---------------------------

Dr Chris Boonzaaier

Conference organiser

Tel: (012) 4202597

E-mail: boonzaai@libarts.up.ac.za

________________________________________________________

***********************************************************

Telematics for African Development Consortium

P.O. Box 31822

Braamfontein

2017

Johannesburg

South Africa

Tel: +27 +11 403-2813

Fax: +27 +11 403-2814

neilshel@icon.co.za