Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
A
public policy of social inclusion can be spelled out only from the analysis
of cumulative exclusion process, which is worsen with new information
and communication technologies development.
Firstly, because it increases the exclusion on basic rights sector of information.
The comprehension that the digital inclusion process takes
part in a citizenship arrangement places us on the right to information, knowledge
and communication context. The access to information is a basic right of every
democratic society based on pluralism, tolerance, justice and mutual respect. Without
information, we have no awareness about our rights and no means to assure it.
When talking about digital inclusion, it refers to a new right culture, not only about
general right to Internet, but also to access to information as a public asset.
Secondly, because it increases the relationship between social and territorial exclusion.
One of the aspects that feature in the Urban Reform is the understanding
that the guarantee of rights is the access to collective facilities. Ensuring the right to
housing, education and health, along with the right to the city, in Urban Reform,
are linked to urban and community equipment access democratization and demand
an infrastructure to be effective. Likewise, access to new information technologies
imposes demands on new means of collective equipment and public assets capable
of ensuring access to information networks.
The path initially taken by the NGOs, and then followed by governments to
overcome the huge distance between the entire Brazilian population and the opportunities
of the digital age, was the installation of community facilities — computer
centers — basically working on digital literacy sector. Information technology associations
and schools, deployed mostly without Internet access, were argued by the
very innovation speed and by social needs and community demands.
In the late 1990s, public policies drafts of digital inclusion were developed in Brazil.
Somehow, the work and income policies trajectories are reproduced in the digital
inclusion sector. Just as we can notice, primarily, particular work and income activities
that didn’t generate joined mobilization and action in terms of local development, the
telecenters trajectory, designed separately and in a peer to peer digital inclusion, didn’t
incorporate a more comprehensive and integrated view of local development.
The path of telecenters public policies needed to consider some of the dilemmas
NGOs had experienced. First, the issue of access, which can’t be restricted to a single
technological dimension or telecommunications sector structure. Secondly, the extent
of digital inclusion policy, which peer to peer perspective had put telecenters as
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