Knowledge Production and Knowledge Communication
Can Internet help overcome the gap between the North and the South? Simo (Yaounde)
The gap between the North and the South is not only economical and political.
It is even more crucial on the field of knowledge production.
The percentage of books produced in the south and especially in Africa
is ridiculous compared to what is printed in the North. Until now, the
gap has been increasing. With the development of communication through
Internet, some people are hoping, that this mode of communication could
help overcome the difficulties due to book productions. The advantage is
seen in the fact that Internet permits direct communication and eliminates
intermediaries who until now had been located in the North and functioned
as instances of selection, control and discrimination. But are all problems
solved with the new media? With the possibility to communicate knowledge
much more easily, there will surely be an increase in the knowledge production
from the South. But the access to Internet is still a problem in the South.
And the production of knowledge is not only a question of will, but also
of means. More over, the field of Knowledge functions exactly like the
field of industrial production, it is not enough to produce and to put
the products at disposal, you must also bring the others to consume them.
Some other conditions have therefore to be fulfilled in order to create
a democratic world wide field of knowledge production, communication and
consumption.
Papers held at the conference "Knowledge Networking in Cultural
Studies" are published in
