Jo&Sanja on Mon, 12 Jul 1999 12:02:47 +0100 |
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Syndicate: RIKS general update july 99 |
RIKS: Internet in Kosov@ Now that in Kosovo the battlefield is turning into a playground for international military, diplomatic, intelligence, aid-, NGO and commercial agents, it is good to remember that quite a few Kosovars have solid experience with building parallel civil structures, dealing with international agents, and using Internet for various purposes. RIKS is a international support-project to re-install and further develop Internet as a tool for reconstruction and reinventing Kosov@ Society. If only to be an equal player on their own ground. A team of international media-activists is working closely with people and projects in the region of Kosov@, Macedonia, Albania, and Montenegro. www.refugjat.org this first web-based database to help refugees from Kosova to find their relatives. It was made by a local Albanian NGO)called ADI (Association for the Democratic Intitiatives) in Gostivar (Macedonia). They exchaneged information with the refugees by going to the camps with notebooks, either digital or paper. In Tetovo a Cybercafe opended just a month before NATO raised the war in Kosova to a higer level. It is owened by a local macedonian-serb and a student of architecture from Prishtina, specializing in web-based animations. Expanding the idea of xs4all-refugees it acquired the perspective of constructing a communicative, community-oriented infrastucture owned by a network of people from local and regional NGO's, enterprises, projects, etc., with the long-term purpose of reconstructing Kosov@. This is RIKS: Reconstructing via Internet Kosov@ Society. The concrete phase RIKS is in now: - Widening the network both regionally to Albania, Montenegro and of course bringing it home to Kosov@, as well as globally, activating support in the international internet-community. - The local pilot project of upgrading the cybercafe in Tetovo to a local ISP, as a basis and a laboratory for transferring to other locations and groups of people working out internet-applications - Introducing micro-radio-stations for producing audio both locally in the ether, and globally via Internet. Besides upgrading, we will widen the reach, or better outreach of the Cybercafe. In collaboration with local NGO's, volunteers will go with laptops to refugees or returnees to exchange data for refugee-finders on the web, e-mail, etc. Net-links using mobile-phones, satlinks or FM-links could be used to create nettents in the camps, in communities or in towns and vilages in Kosov@. I would also like to mention the Operating System Linux: we are in the process of distributing RedHat 6.0, forming Linux-workshops and -clubs. Let me resume the basic approach of RIKS: xs4all refugees, radical democracy, producing and re-inventing media is juicier than just consuming, grassroot networking: local laboratories, regional transfer, global support network tactical media: mobile, flexible, human scale and cheap! www.an.org/riks/ jo@xs4all.nl Jo van der Spek journalist and coordinator of RIKS Reconstructing via Internet Kosov@ Society www.an.org/riks/ tel +31.20.6718027 jo@xs4all.nl H.Seghersstraat 46 1072 LZ Amsterdam Jo van der Spek is a free lance journalist and programmer of public debates on matters political and cultural both in the national and international domain >*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> mos ban luft, ban dashuri ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress