Hicham Maged's blog Acquiring knowledge lead to the acquisition of power

Egypt @ Digital Age

Media simply means the process of delivering materials (data/information) to public via different tools, which is something that had been practiced since dawn of history within different civilisations.

The tools involved in such process had been developed according to the technological human achievement which varied among ‘incisions’, ‘paper prints’, ‘radio broadcasting’, ‘TV broadcasting’ and last but not the least ‘digital broadcasting’ in the current 21st century.

Broadcasting Overview

This process has not merely dealt with delivering the message, but mainly stepped into archiving the material in an attempt to facilitate reaching it either for normal people generally or researches specially in different fields.

Consequently, archiving had been developed according to the technological human achievement which has not only dealt with backing-up the material but stepped into indexing them in a searchable form that make it easily for anyone to find what he/she is looking for in a short time. This is an overview for the concept of media either the mass media or the news media without any technical details.

Broadcast and Beyond

Egypt had started digitizing different media material since the 90s of the last century, either the governmental or non-governmental media outlets. This can be clearly figured out in ‘Newspapers and Magazines’ which have their own websites with digital archives, and this means they are achieving.

Nevertheless, at the end of the 1st decade of the 21st century, we still lack for good archiving systems that facilitate calling back what has been broadcasted in Radio or TV. Citizens have different interests so it is impossible to keep following with all channels, either talk-shows which deal with covering vital issues for the citizen, or documentaries that deal with whatever Egyptian aspects.

In a nutshell, I am simply calling for availability of archived Radio/TV broadcasting of media establishments, either governmental or non, on the internet in an way that make it easy to reach them.

Such archiving shall help a lot in enriching people, either the normal citizens or the researchers in different fields such as: social, economical, political, environmental, and media researchers/students. By the way, this is not science-fiction since many other media outlets are already uploading their content to various broadcasting services like YouTube for example.

Bureaucratic Effect

I myself do not limit the scope of ‘sustainability’ on the natural/built environment; rather I see it capable of enclosing the digital environment. Hence, I can not end this post without mentioning how astonished I felt when an idea of applying Fair Usage Policy (FUP) for internet usage was presented this month in Egypt.

Whether this was a suggestion from local ISP or a governmental idea; I see it as a perfect example on how a bureaucratic mentality can be an obstacle in the way for empowerment of citizens.

C'mon! We are living in the Digital Age which means citizens are looking forward for getting more information for whatever reasons; work, education or even entertainment. Hence we are expecting more speeds to pave the ‘Information Highway’, not to limit the usage!

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. ~ [Thomas Jefferson]

[image source]

Categories: Environment, Reflections
Viewed: 1,385 views

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...