What we've got here is a failure to communicate

I recently received this picture from someone who I had perceived as a person with strongly held opinions but with an open mind, not blinded by prejudice. I am now not quite so sure about that perception of lack of prejudice.

I realise that the picture is meant to be a joke, a parody of the online dating services that many of us will have seen at some time or other. I am by no means a killjoy, but this sort of parody, based on ridiculing ethnic or religious ideas, behaviour or stereotypes can often be incredibly demeaning in its attitude towards the targeted group(s). I believe that this one oversteps the bounds of 'reasonableness'.

Here the 'cartoonist' shows the idea that the Moslem male regards women as less than human in status, on par with valued animals, maybe even hinting at a sexual side of this attitude, invoking the stereotypical jokes about Arab men and camels, etc. Then there is the mocking of the idea of Moslem women covering themselves with the garment called the burqa. Whether any of us agree with the wearing of this garment or not is irrelevant. For a significant number of Moslem women this is what they wish to wear. The covering garment may not necessarily be as totally encompassing as the burqa, but rather a variant such as the hajib, or head scarf. The list of ideas mocked is greater than this, but I think that by now you will understand what it is that I am concerned about.

I wonder, for example, what the reaction would be to a similar web page targeting Jews. It might have a heading of "Diamond Joe's Blackhat Dating Service" with a photograph or caricature of a certain widely known Australian Jewish ultra-orthodox religious identity. Instead of the women in burquas we could have pictures of unattractive women with large noses wearing ill-fitting wigs, etc. This web page would exhibit a range of ethnic/religious stereotypes in the same way as the one which I received - Shades of the virulently anti-Semitic cartoons in Julius Streicher's newspaper, 'Der Sturmer', during the Nazi period in Germany.

The creators of such cartoons or writings are very clear what it is that they want to communicate - ideas which foster ethnic & religious intolerance. For the rest of us, I think we often overlook the serious implications of the ethnic joke, wanting to only see the 'funny' bits. This is not good enough! If ordinary people do not want to encourage intolerance and hatred between various groups then now is the time for them to take a stand. All of us who are offended by racism must clearly stand up and say to others that racism is never OK, regardless of what form it takes. Here I am including all manifestations of racism, not just that of 'Westerners' showing lack of respect for other ways of looking at the world. I am offended by many actions of groups like the Taliban in the same way that I am offended by people in this country abusing Moslem women who wear the hijab. The attitudes are similar - total lack of respect for the rights and beliefs of others, and the idea that it is OK to ridicule, marginalise or commit violent acts against 'them', the 'other', the 'not us'.

The 'them' and 'us' attitude that such material fosters is something that all decent people should become aware of and thus be able to counter in whatever community they live. This can be through comments made to friends about the lack of desirability of such material as the web page I have displayed here. It can also be voiced in the political sphere by not supporting organisations which by their policies encourage these divisive attitudes - at home or abroad!

As for my perception of the person who sent this web page to me, I hope that they have acted from a position of 'seeing the whole thing as a joke', not perceiving the darker aspects of such material.

Open Source Software and the State of the World

Today I want to talk about open source software in connection with the 'them' and 'us' feeling that I believe is widely felt all over the world.

Initially you might think that these two topics have nothing to do with each other but hopefully by the end of this post you will understand that these two topics are actually connected in many complex ways.

Whether the 'us' mentioned previously refers to some European-style culture and 'them' to another culture with significantly different values OR the reverse position OR even between nations or peoples of more similar cultural style, the sense of a conflict in cultural values still remains. Does this feeling reflect reality? Yes, but the propaganda on all sides has, I believe, made the problem appear larger than it is. Terrorism is very real, but those who are the actual perpetrators are a small minority in any culture - most people just want to be able to get on with their lives, raise families in safety and make a reasonable living. These ordinary people also want a sense that others do not denigrate their cultures. This is not meant to imply that everyone must accept all values that a given culture embraces, but rather that any dialogue must be respectful in approach.

I believe that much of the distrust by non-European cultures towards cultures based on various European models is that the former feel that the latter devalue their cultures and maybe even wish to destroy them. In many cases this may be based on experiences when their lands were colonised by various European-style nations. This distrust can also exist between more similar cultures, such as between Japan and a number of her neighbours or minority language and cultural groups in various countries. The distrust may also be engendered by a feeling of being overwhelmed by various societal changes related to the push towards economic globalisation.

Imagine that you could get an office suite, Internet browser and other major software categories with all menus, help information and more in your local language. If your local language is a form of English, French, Spanish, Portuguese or Chinese this is most likely readily available even with commercial software, but if you speak Basque, Catalan, Vietnamese, Lao or some other language with a relatively small population profile then this is far less likely. Add to this the issue of many people not being able to afford computer software which can often lead to wholesale piracy of commercial software in an understood major language. With major commercial software, the creation of versions translated into less dominant languages would make little economic sense.

Consider now the relatively new class of software known as 'open source'. This includes many different types of software, including office suites, graphics programs, e-Mail clients, Internet browsers, games and even operating systems (eg. Linux). These are mostly available free of charge (in an executable form), but what makes them really special is that their source code is readily available for anyone who is interested. Most computer users will have absolutely no interest in that, but what it means is that the source code can be altered to, among other things, display the user interface in a different language. In fact, many open source programs are written in such a way that changing the displayed language is a relatively straightforward task.

I read somewhere that one of the worst things that can happen to a person is to lose their sense of identity. One such situation I can readily think of is that group of Aboriginal Australians generally known as the 'Stolen Generations' where Aboriginal children of mostly mixed racial descent were taken from their parents to be raised in a white environment and thus eventually fully assimilate into the predominantly European-based culture. Similarly where minority or non-dominant cultures and languages have been actively suppressed.

The availability of computer software in many non-dominant languages is a way for cultural groups to strengthen their identities, allowing their children to not only be involved in a wider world through the Internet, but to be able to do so via software which recognises their heritage and indeed celebrates it!

It would be naive to suggest that having software available in many different languages will solve all the problems related to cultural tensions between different groups of people. Where these clashes do cause people to feel that they are in real danger of having their own cultural identities crushed, perhaps having such software will help them to repair some of these feelings and allow them to move forward in the knowledge that their heritage can be seen and felt both by their own people, but also by a much larger world.

Many people can express themselves eloquently in their own language, but may appear far less confident when expressing themselves in another one. Now, using these multilingual tools, many different cultural groups can get their ideas out to a larger world on their own terms. Hopefully people gifted in their ability to translate from their own languages to more widely used ones will make the best of these ideas available to much larger audiences.

This after all is one of the main planks of the open source philosophy: To promote and celebrate freedom of expression in both the cultural and technological realms.