austraLasia
1546
John's Gospel part
2: eleutheros (Jn 8:32). Setting people free in a digital
world
ROME: 30th April 2006 -- I
make no pretence to biblical scholarship, but I'll stand my ground within the
area of communications. First, though, an interesting historical note -
did you know that Martin Luther was actually Martin Luder? After his conversion
experience, he changed his surname to 'Luther' because it was akin to the word
which Paul (and John) used to express the nature of the freedman, as opposed to
the slave - eleutheros.
Centuries later it took
someone in the world of blogging and just generally being in touch in the
cybersphere to point out that there is a remarkable convergence of thinking
between Catholic Social Teaching and the point of view of someone like Richard
Stallman, professed atheist and founder of the Free Software Movement.
So where does 'eleutheros' come in to
this? I decided to follow up the person who made the comment about the
convergence between CST and FSM and even though it appeared on an American-based
site (Newsforge) it turns out he lives near Rome! We are subsequently in
touch (his name is Marco Fioretti), and I suggest you go to http://www.eleutheros.it/ where you can
find an English version as well, to find out more. But of special interest
is their Manifesto - quite possibly they are not aware that he who chose the
name 'Luther' was also for famous for more than one Manifesto! Marco and
his group have a meeting with CEI, the Italian Episcopal Commission, in October
with some serious and useful suggestions for bringing the Church's practice into
line with its language in such areas as reducing the digital divide by creating
materials which offer broad, non-cost access. I suggest that we Salesians
could think similarly. From here on we bypass John's Gospel and just get
practical.
Have you realised that you
can do just about everything you normally do on a computer with FLOSS?
FLOSS, by the way, means Free (Libre) Open Source Software. The 'libre' is
there to remind us that it is 'eleutheros' (free and open) that we are talking
about, not necessarily free as in beer. But again, being practical, the
material below is also free as in beer! I leave aside the question of
operating systems.
Office:
OpenOffice.org will do everything, almost, that Microsoft Office will do
and at times better. Want to print a normal portrait-sized document as a
booklet, landscape and correctly collated for pages - OO.o will do it for you
simply. Word processing: you have NO word or even Open
Office available with you but you have a permanent connection to the internet -
go to Ajaxwrite or Writely or Thinkfree Office online and
you'll find you can do document production just the same way, store it, share it
with others, save it as .doc, .ppt, .pdf if you need to.
Antivirus: Why pay annually for something when you can use
Avast! They will ask you to register but not to pay.
Browser: No need to convince most people these days that
Firefox or Opera or Safari are sensible free options.
Email: You can't do much better than Thunderbird. It has
few if any security concerns. Data compression: Try
7-zip. It opens more files, faster.
Graphics: GIMPshop will do what Photoshop does.
PDF: Sure, Acrobat reader is free - but it's heavy.
Try Foxit - very fast and free. Want to create a document as
PDF? OpenOffice first choice. Otherwise, PrimoPDf or
PDFCreator. FTP: Silly to pay when you can use
SmartFTP or a dozen others. HTML editing if you do
that sort of thing: Nvu. Education
online: now we're into big things - Moodle allows the
production and distribution of distance education (BoscoWiki is in fact based on
the same principle). Web conferencing: did you realise this
can be done for free too? It's called WebHuddle. It really
could save some airfares! Slides: Instead of the best known
proprietary software you can use OO.o Impress. But why not explore
one of S5, Slidy or just use the Opera browser? If you have
ever got your hands dirty with xhtml, css and javascript it's easy. If you
haven't, stick with OO.o Impress.
And I've
barely begun: spyware control (Spybot), file
encryption (TrueCrypt), mindmapping
(Freemind), search and replace (InfoRapid),
content analysis (AnSWR), desktop publishing
(Scribus, LaTex...)....
But the key
question is why we might act in ways described above. Possibly because
Communio et Progressio said " the man who wants information must have
access to the varied means of social communication" or because the Church and
the Internet said "Church leaders are obliged to use the full potential of
the computer age...". Proprietary formats and protocols restrict, lock in
or even prevent end-users from full access and potential. And we are
educators - do we teach the kids just to push buttons or to understand what they
are doing? Can we do something practical to reduce the digital
divide? We can. Exploring some of the above options is a step in
that direction because they are mostly based on a principle of broad access, and
I am talking about the nature of the technology, not the fact that they are also
free. They are, to put it in a phrase we should recognize, 'David
opportunities'. JBF
If you have comment, questions,
other information regarding this article why not add it to BoscoWiki austraLasia
page.
_______________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the
Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for
ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com
Try out BoscoWiki to be interactive. For RSS feeds, subscribe to
www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml