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
perpetuity of information.
The information is perennial, but the media is not. In its life cycle, information
will be transported from one format to another (and from one media to another)
and we cannot accept any loss of data on these processes.
For editable electronic documents (texts, spreadsheets and presentations) we
have the ODF standard, which is developed by an international board (OASIS) 9 and
has been approved as an international standard in 2006 (ISO/IEC 26.300) 10 . It was
also adopted as a Brazilian standard in 2008, as NBR ISO/IEC 26.300 11 .
ODF documents (.odt files for text, .odt for spreadsheets, and .odp for presentations)
can be manipulated by a wide range of applications from office suites
(as OpenOffice.org) to web portals that provide document viewing and edition, as
Google Docs 12 . The user is totally free to choose.
These documents saved in open standard formats will still be accessible, in theory,
within 50 or 100 years, since all information on how data is stored is available
on Internet and can be used by anyone, with no license required.
Those who control an standard for information storage and exchange, can actually
control communication itself, determining when, how and by whom each piece
of information is going to be accessed, shared and manipulated. The only way of
assuring that communication will be truly open is by using open standards: using
technology as an ally, and not a trap, for information communication and storage.
For further information about the ODF standard, visit: www.odfalliance.org.
9. Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards Consortium: http://www.
oasis-open.org.
10. “ISO/IEC 26.300:2006: Information technology — Open Document Format for Office Applications
(OpenDocument) v1.0”: http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=43485.
11. “ABNT NBR ISO/IEC 26300:2008”: http://www.abntcatalogo.com.br/norma.aspx?ID=1549.
12. “Application support for the OpenDocument format”: http://opendocumentfellowship.com/
applications.
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