TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Making the most of technology
If education is, as Nelson Mandela famously said, the most powerful weapon one can use to change the world, then the World Wide Web is a long-range missile
Change Size
If education is, as Nelson Mandela famously said, the most powerful weapon one can use to change the world, then the World Wide Web is a long-range missile.
In an era when reading is not about books per se, the Internet offers a wealth of online resources waiting to be exploited for educational purposes, boosting the speed of information dissemination to everyone who has access to a PC and a decent connection.
At times when community libraries are sprouting in villages nationwide, the many e-books stored online could actually help nurture the already rising interest in books, helping cut the costs of printing and distributing conventional books.
Unfortunately, very few have realized this potential, according to Stefanus Muryanto, an Indonesia researcher involved in the Global Text Project, which aims to make textbooks available to the many who cannot afford them.
The project already hosts dozens of open-source materials in fields ranging from computing to social sciences.
"Its development in Indonesia is still very slow as not many people wanted to make use of it," Stefanus said.
Let's not get carried away imagining a reading community where people are simply carrying e-book readers in their pockets. Let's start simple.
"Although it is still limited, almost every big city in Indonesia already has the Internet," said 31-year-old Muhammad Natsir, who hosts a website holding free e-books.
"If one needs to develop the book collection of a certain community library, why not make use of the warnet *Internet caf** and make a print out of the available e-books."
Those who managed community libraries often failed to notice the potential available in their own area, according to Dessy Sekar Astina, a reading campaigner from Forum Indonesia Membaca (Indonesia Reading Forum).
And in an increasingly connected world where books are no longer solely distributed as paper-based, the potential of online resources is even greater.
What remains a challenge is how to promote such potential and keep the distribution of information moving.
As author David Bollier stated, the Internet is a distributed media system of low-cost capital (your personal computer) strung together with inexpensive transmission and software.
It is true that as an archipelago, Indonesia is facing the challenge of creating efficient infrastructure, but technology keeps on advancing and one just needs to look for leeway to maneuver with inexpensive efforts such as RT/RW Net, a community-based Internet infrastructure development.
With a single circle of RT/RW Net in districts and subdistricts, the community can have access to the non-copyrighted e-books, can make printouts and distribute them to local community libraries.
Let the missile be launched!
- JP/Anissa S. Febrina
Some e-book sources
www.globaltext.terry.uga.edu
www.pustaka78.com
www.gutenberg.org
