The Road To Open Knowledge

THEMES:

• Globalization versus localization
• Filipino internet user cultural patterns
• Walkthrough featuring 4 Vibal Foundation mashups

In "The World Is Flat," Thomas Friedman writes about how the immense progress in communications technology over the last few decades has sparked a third wave of globalization, which he calls Globalization 3.0. Whereas Globalization 1.0 was driven by the rise of empires and nation-states and the key players in Globalization 2.0 were multi-national conglomerates, Globalization 3.0 'flattened' the world with the parallel development of a worldwide fiber-optic network and open source software. The mobility of ideas and capital, mediated by this new global connectivity, has leveled the playing field between developed and developing countries. In place of the hierarchies and vertical power structures which characterized the industrial economy in Globalization 2.0, Friedman visualizes a new marketplace bound by open collaboration between communities from Manila to New York.

Friedman's concept of a 'flat' global society emphasizes integration and sidelines cultural and historical differences between countries. However, Friedman's ideal convergence of ideas is not necessarily followed by the convergence of cultures. Internet usage may be a uniform phenomenon worldwide, but patterns of behavior within communities remain localized. Dutch anthropologist Geert Hofstede's study (http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/) of national cultures and values lays out the cultural foundations of human behavior. Hofstede classifies cultures within a five-dimensional structure: power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation.

Based on Hofstede's index, Philippine society is characterized by hierarchical relationships, integrated social groups, highly differentiated sexual roles, and cultural arrangements which place a premium on respect for tradition. While these arrangements are not an exact reflection of Filipino organizational values, Hofstede's theoretical framework provides important insights into the elements that constitute cultural behavior of Filipinos while using the Internet.

The flat world that Friedman envisions must therefore be mapped onto a dynamic network of shifting cultural patterns. While Globalization 3.0 can bridge economic and educational gaps between countries through technology, the true power of such a convergence lies in people being able to bridge cultural gaps between societies. Friedman calls open source and social software 'disruptive technologies' because they have radically changed the way that people behave and interact. It should be pointed out that technologies must be disruptive in order to transform existing organizational structures within communities and to introduce innovation at the level of local interaction.

The flattening of the world, that is, the equalization of opportunity for everyone and the democratization of access to essential resources such as knowledge and information, can only be realized through a cultural change in orientation which will depend on people learning to look within their societies first before looking outward to the world.

With a population of 91 million people and a rapidly growing Internet penetration rate of 16%, the Philippines is poised to take its place in Globalization 3.0. However, while more and more Filipinos are actively involved with Internet technologies, a culture of collaboration, open access and free content still has to take root in a country where important public discourse is conducted in the margins. Hofstede's study indicates a strong sense of collectivism among Filipinos, a characteristic which restricts their individualistic expression. The high cultural value assigned to observing one's place in the social process also means that the openness and spontaneity associated with collaboration—the fuel which powers competitive economies in the flat world—are compromised.

Vibal Foundation, a newly established philanthropy dedicated to furthering open education, has found it necessary to localize these globally pervasive web technologies. The foundation has found that it is not enough to create a technological infrastructure for collaboration through using Web 2.0 software such as Mediawiki, Joomla, Wordpress, and Drupal. While Wikipedia, for example, is arguably the most successful open source model of collaboration conducted on a global scale, building a Philippine encyclopedia such as WikiPilipinas (http://wikipilipinas.org), which is powered by the same software and aligned to the same vision of sharing knowledge, has had to entail an extensive degree of customization or—more precisely—localization to suit Filipino cultural preferences. Where Wikipedia builds on the encyclopedic model of an objective collection of facts purged of editorial bias, WikiPilipinas’ editorial policy is to create an eclectic mix of facts, feature articles, youth writing projects, and social networking functionalities to map the process of information sharing onto Filipino paradigms of community interaction. In fact WikiPilipinas eschews the “neutral point of view” (NPOV) and other ethical guidelines considered as part of Wikipedia’s “Five Pillars” in order to achieve its vision for WikiPilipinas.

This presentation will discuss how something as universal as free technology is shaped by cultural particularities, using the example of Vibal Foundation (http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Vibal_Foundation) and its social media initiatives to foster the open content movement in the Philippines: Filipiniana.net (http://www.filipiniana.net), a free digital library of books, images, audio and video; WikiPilipinas.org (http://wikipilipinas.org), an online encyclopedia of Philippine content; Pinoy Online Chronicles (http://thepoc.net), an aggregator of news and meta on Philippine issues; and E-turo.org (http://www.e-turo.org), a repository of open educational resources for Filipino teachers and students. Through mashing up and reconfiguring global technologies to address a specific audience, the foundation’s four projects enable Filipinos to step out into and start participating in the flat and borderless world of knowledge.

A short walkthrough familiarizes the international attendees on the following mashups:

• WikiPilipinas, a wiki encyclopedia employing MediaWiki that is made to look like a blog with the embedding of YouTube videos, social bookmarks, user ratings, commenting and threading. • Filipiniana.net, a digital library of public domain and copyright restricted, based on Java and MySQL, which is to acquire social bookmarking and social chatting features • ThePOC.net, an online current events news site that is configured to look like a TV channel, mixed with blogging and other social networking features. • E-Turo.org, a free and open education portal based on Drupal which hosts wiki textbooks, a blogging community of teachers and students, and interactive lessons and exercises.