Mohammed Salih (Speech at the Doors of Perception 3 Conference)

Table of Contents:
Summary
Introduction
Eight Points
The Invisible Other
Control
Human Encounters
Satellites Seen from Earth

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Summary
Mohammed Salih, an economist and social scientist at the Institute for Social Studies in the Hague, focuses on several critically important gaps in today's thinking on information technology and sustainable development. Chief among these is the lack of what he terms the social-cultural dimension. In Salih's view, the politics of sustainable development have been almost entirely overlooked. Issues of communication and culture were hardly mentioned in Agenda 21, the manifesto produced by the Rio Summit in 1992. No serious programme for sustainability can be implemented locally without understanding the cultural background of the societies involved, Salih asserts. In this sense, existing strategies for sustainable development accept the existence of a great number of politically invisible `aliens'. Salih points out that information technology is not neutral. Those dealing with information technology have a responsibility to challenge hegemonic, oppressive uses of it. He links sustainable development directly to the responsible use of information, which will not be possible while culture remains a missing dimension.

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Introduction
My presentation this morning deals with the issue of sustainable development, but from a different angle. I will try to concentrate on three variables.

The first is the missing dimension in sustainable development -- the social-cultural dimension. Secondly, I will talk about the importance of information technology in sustainable development. But while doing that, I will try also present some critique about the implications of these linkages in that part of the world for which this technology is not available (including pre-literate societies.)

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Eight Points
Beginning with the concept of sustainable development, I will summarise it in eight points, mainly concerning the meaning of sustainable development in a world that is so global and not in the least universal. I argue from the British point of view that what is global is not universal. The global itself is localised -- what one society perceives as global could be local for other societies.

Firstly, sustainable development emphasises futurity -- it looks forward to the future. Secondly, it emphasises intergenerational equity. Thirdly, it emphasises the incorporation of environment into development thinking. Fourthly, it emphasises participation. Fifth, it emphasises the need for global ethics. Sixth, it emphasises the need for a global regime for natural resources management. Seventh, it emphasises that there are limits to growth and thus that environmental capacity should not be exceeded in a way that we try to develop our lives. Eighth and finally, it emphasises the right of both humans and non-humans to well-being and to life.

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The Invisible Other
How do we put all these things together? We all agree that sustainable development is a fantastic global ideal, but we should also look beyond the ideal to see the politics of it. In order to do that, we have to see how it has been perceived in different cultures and in different societies. That is why I argue here that one of the main problems of sustainable development is that it has neglected four main issues: difference, diversity, plurality and inequity -- that we live in a world that is unequal. In that sense, sustainable development has failed to come to terms with difference, short of recognising diversity as a source of strength. It has also furthered intolerance to the plurality of ideas in the way it has been perceived and advanced to the world.

In my view, this is plainly evident: not in politics, as South and North confront each other as to who should get what and who should stop producing certain emissions and reducing certain emissions; not in the global practical economy of resource management, control and administration, but rather in the very documents that have come out as regards what these global environmental governors and global systems of management of resources should mean.

In its four main sections, which one would have thought would deal with these issues, Agenda 21 has never mentioned issues related to communications and culture in any clear terms. There is a whole section on information and data collection; on science and technology; on information, as well as a whole section which deals with how to instrumentalize the concept by providing finances to it.

To me, sustainable development shares with conventional development that lack of the cultural dimension. People have been carrying out development processes in the South and the North with less attention to this. The same thing is happening with sustainable development, because the core values of sustainable development are within the core values of conventional development. The executors have to be reminded of some of those invisible characters in the world's politics. For example, women's issues were never part of our common future. It was only after the women's council for sustainable development had its meeting in Florida, that Agenda 21 expanded to include a section on women. The same thing is true of culture. Many societies are trying to deal with the issue of culture because of a local `Agenda 21'. Agenda 21 cannot be implemented locally in any society without knowing the cultural background of that society.

If culture is a missing dimension in sustainable development, it means that it must be part of the responsibility of those who are dealing with information and eco-information to come out with a very clear vision of how to harness sustainable development to fit it into new conceptions and new ideas.

To begin with: like any other technology, information technology is not neutral. This fact burdens it with the task of using eco-information sensibly, in order to offer discourses conscious of difference, otherness and plurality. For information technology to be credible, it must challenge any attempt by the dominant power structures to use it to further reinforce hegemonic paradigms. Information technologies should be used to advocate alternative symbols and images, including those of the other. This is particularly so in an area linking ecology and information as a dynamic force mediated by diverse cultures, values and systems of communication that can now hardly be called universal beyond the technology that transmits it.

Eco-information will fail to achieve its goals if it is to legitimise an expanding ideology of global dominance, for the maintenance of conformity. This is not a call for a symbolic cold war, nor is it an essential call for parity and destruction of valued elements of peaceful co-existence. What is at stake is not a medium or media to be used efficiently, but a mediator to be used effectively to address the alien within, in order to reach out to the alien without, or `invisible alien.'

To my mind, Doors of Perception's theme regarding eco-information should not be a theme of universalization to betray the weak and disadvantaged, or share hegemonic visions which assume that the others do not exist or are politically invisible because they do not directly determine their being. To share with the centres of dominance a theme of the invisibility of the other is to subject our consciousness to a political and moral intimidation, which limits our vision and closes the doors of perception themselves.

Sustainable development is no different. This global message can also be seen in the light of global agents and structures, in relation to the other's invisibility -- the other as a source of self-accommodation, watched and interacted with by images, pictures, utterances and scripts shared not only by information systems, but also dependent on material and non-material values, which are important to us.

The realisation that the other is also a source of values, even if only to be confronted and dismissed, is important in vision acquisition and probably the discovery of the invisible itself. Since the nature and content of interactions could be predetermined by maintaining the status quo, it is to hope that this Doors of Perception 3 does not serve to reinforce the status quo.

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Control
Despite the fear that information technology may pose threats to individual cultures, through cultural invasion or cultural imperialism, there is a likelihood that it might be used in a subversive manner to resist the very hegemonic structures that created it. The use of information technology by global networks and environmental movements is a testimony to how one sector of trans-national corporations -- oil, mineral exploitation, timber exports, fishing fleets, hazardous waste dumping companies and all of that, have been resisted by pre-literate societies, who use one type or another of information technology to solicit global solidarity against large-scale environmental damage. Telefax and e-mail modems have been transmitting information about the Chiapas revolt in Mexico, the revolt of various peoples against Shell Oil Company and others. And they have also been transmitting information about death sentences passed on heroes from pre-literate societies such as Ken Sarowiwa and others.

The point I am driving at is that technology, whatever kind of technology, whether it is information technology or another, is not controllable. Everyone has a right to use it and everyone can use it in a subversive manner. In the same way, others would try to use it to reaffirm and confirm the status quo. It is understandable that information technology is part of the economic globalization process at the level of business interests, transnational corporations and global industrial franchise, and that it plays a strategic role in national, international and even global security, monitoring environmental change, including climate change, oil spills, ozone layer depletions, large scale radioactive and chemical emissions and so forth.

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Human Encounters
However, it is now common knowledge that individual aliens from the North reach out to and communicate with aliens from the South. It creates solidarity with disadvantaged societies or societies at risk. It helps discovery, through different means than those used by explorers and early discoverers. It curiously leads others to regain a sense of their space, a sense of psychic security. It also helps reduce tensions and fears about the unknown. And it leads to the sheer pleasure of being able to travel through the cosmic void to meet diverse people's cultures and ways of doing things without leaving the comfort of your own home.

The encounter of humans with humans through information technology is important. We are told that our homes are also going to be our workplace. This is also the biggest issue of the annexation of time and space. How can you think about a society in which time has been annexed and in which space has been annexed and colonised? Information technology does not operate only on small modems and small TV screens in our homes. It operates with satellites that navigate the cosmic void. This is one of the most important factors or functions of the environment -- its function as information carrier.

Now we see that this function has been transformed from the literal meaning of information carrier in terms of carrying biological, chemical and other information embodied in the environment, into carrying satellites, messages and information to people from all over the world.

There is also a claim that information technology is good for the environment. We are told that those heaps of paper can be replaced and the information they contain can be transmitted through screens. In addition to that, we are told that information technology is also going to combine or integrate two processes: production and reproduction. With regard to reproduction, it is going to re-combine work, leisure and consumption and in that sense, it is going to save energy. That means people do not have to travel to work, but remain in the comfort of their houses.

But in addition to that, there are also some other problems. Let us not forget that there are some very serious psychological problems of individualism as people begin to sit in their homes, day in and day out, watching their TV screens. There are also some very serious environmental problems emanating from the use of information technology. Most of the materials used in information technology are non-biodegradable. In that sense, they would also have an impact on the environment.

To summarise, the annexation of time and space by information technology has far-reaching implications for the reduction of pollution by the reduction of travel to work. It saves energy and materials, which have otherwise been used to move people around from town to town and from city to city. It also indicates imposition of further limitations on the geographic and social space of people. By implication, individuals connected with information technology terminals would be able to trade commodities through the cosmic void and assign to the ecology the task of modernising production and reproduction through its functions as information carrier.

Contrary to this claim, information technology is also not good for the environment, as I have mentioned earlier, because of the other environmental impacts that it might have.

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Satellites Seen from Earth
To conclude, I would betray my own conscience not to quote my own grandfather as he himself has witnessed the satellites move in the skies of our village. Simply because of the sort of dark light and clear skies that we have, you can always see the satellites moving. They move faster than other stars because of their proximity to the earth.

In some parts of the South, when the light of day and blue skies give way to the darkness of night, people have an ample opportunity to observe. In the Nuba mountains of the Sudan where I come from, people call satellites human-made, red-tailed stars, because they move faster relative to their proximity to the stars and to the earth. The glittering of the satellite navigating through the cosmic void helped some pre-literate societies to develop ways of distinguishing between manufactured and real stars. And therefore, they made a distinction between real cosmic elements and artificial cosmic elements. The manufacturer of human-made stars is invisible to the other. The carrier and mediator of information technology do not have an impact on the part of the other that has also developed its own ways of experiencing them. To my grandfather, the idea that humans strive to reveal their contestation to God's domination by exploring and hence claiming the cosmic void was not new. In his words, God revealed his image after humans, in order to heel their hidden desire to conquer God's kingdom. In this sense, chiefs and governors of the human domain act on God's behalf.

For my grandfather's generation, in my tribe and probably elsewhere, TV portrays images of living beings attempting to share with the gods their capacity to be both visible and invisible at the same time. The people we watch on TV are invisible persons, but remain visible as visions and images. Heaven and earth, on which human-made, red-tailed stars operate, would make humans into beings without earthly homes to live in, soils to cultivate and children to raise or look after them when they are old. Developing the capacity to tamper with heaven and earth is not necessarily a sign of progress. It could come to be symbolised by village people ignoring the real stars and spending more time glorifying human-made stars or watching TV screens.

To them, TV screens give birth without pregnancy and invoke the sentiments of a stream of people who come from nowhere. I certainly do not share all conservative views about the cosmology of manufactured symbols, but it would be a sign of great arrogance to ignore their relevance to pre-literate societies at the age of global risk and opportunities.

Humans will always remain indignant about controlling their destiny with the products of science and technology which they have developed. Certainly, the artificiality of constructed creation can be superior to human, thus accentuating and reaffirming the traditional relationship between humans and their products. In short, does the annexation of time and space and the cosmic void mean the application of the other's right to the cosmic void and its ecological regulatory functions, to ensure the continuity of new productive capacity by means of information technology? What are the moral and ethical obligations involved in treating the cosmic void as a productive and reproductive asset? And of its colonisation by a few technologically advanced nations?

These issues cannot be addressed without reference to the need for responsible information technology and multimedia system operators, who knowing that for some societies, time and space do not exist beyond their immediate surroundings. After all, sharing manufactured symbols of compassion or outrage would probably invoke the most challenging aspects of humanity: difference, diversity, plurality and people's perception of their relationship with their surrounding environment. It is a challenge that sustainable development has to live up to in order to become a real human idea.