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News from ICTP 95 - What's New
ICTP's e-mail information network does more than just deliver
mail. For many researchers in the South, it's their pathway to
information on the world wide web.
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The information revolution has
not only brought scientists closer together on a global scale;
in the minds of some critics, it has created a 'digital divide'--a
gnawing gap between scientists in the North, who enjoy full e-connectivity,
and their colleagues in the South, who do not.
ICTP's "www4mail" project, which Centre staffer Clement
Onime and I launched in 1998, has sought to close this troublesome
divide by providing researchers in developing countries with access
to databases, online journals, and scientific preprint repositories
via e-mail.
Simply put, www4mail gives browsers in the South the means to
navigate the internet off-line and free-of-charge through low-cost
technologies that are available in their home countries. As a
result, www4mail offers an instructive example of a technological
solution to disparities in 'information access' between the North
and South. It also aims to help fulfil ICTP's mandate for transferring
knowledge to developing countries.
An important lesson learned from www4mail is that high-bandwidth
access to the internet is not essential for bridging the digital
divide. Indeed the service--and the software that drives it--offers
web information to internet users in countries where full connectivity
is not widespread. As an added bonus, www4mail's support for non-Western
character sets enables internet users from these countries to
interact with web-based information in their own languages.
Since its launch more than two years ago, the software has evolved
rapidly thanks largely to extensive user feedback that has led
to enhancements and new features. www4mail was designed to overcome
many of the obstacles--such as JavaScript, cookies and frames--that
have sometimes impeded the use of other free software. At the
same time, it has tried to replicate, as closely as possible,
the experience of browsing the web via full internet connection,
including searches of online databases.
Most importantly, the software is easy to use and extremely reliable.
So much so that the www4mail project was named a finalist in the
Stockholm Challenge Award 2000, a 'cyberspace competition' that
included more than 600 projects from 84 countries (see News
from ICTP, Summer 2000, p. 14).
An evolving goal of the project is to disseminate the service
more widely and to use it as a catalyst to build capacity in developing
countries for setting up and hosting local www4mail services.
Until now, five main public www4mail servers--one each in Germany,
Italy and the United States and and two in Canada--have been established
to deliver web pages via e-mail to users around the world. Each
server can supply more than 5,000 pages of information daily.
We hope to have additional servers in place in the near future.
www4mail's value is reflected largely in its rising number of
users. But like the dynamic environment in which it operates,
the project's prospects for success in the future (and the not-so-distant
future at that) lie in its ability to meet the demands of an ever-more
sophisticated and complex operating environment. That, in turn,
means finding ways to provide easy access to more dynamic content,
multimedia elements, and specialised software.
To keep pace, the www4mail project must continually draw on state-of-the-art
knowledge and technologies. For this reason, observations and
insights from www4mail users are always welcome. It's the only
way we can ensure that we stay abreast of advances in the field
in ways that allow us to serve the needs of scientists working
in remote areas. By taking one small step at a time, projects
like www4mail will help determine whether, over time, the digital
divide narrows into a sliver of separation ultimately bridged
by creative applications of today's technology.
Questions concerning www4mail may be addressed to canessae@ictp.trieste.it. For a first-hand look at the project, see http://www.ictp.it/~www4mail.
Enrique Canessa
ICTP Consultant, Scientific Computing Section