Speech:   "The Internet and society"    Takashi SAITO

     at Soroptimist International Group in Davis      February 5  2003

 

On February 5,2003, Soroptimist International Group in Davis held a luncheon workshop at the restaurant California in Davis.  The following lecture was part of it. I spoke about "the Internet and society"  in English.

I would like to say a thank you the following people; Margaret Dutra who is my teacher of English conversation class in Davis IH, Yvonne Piper  who was an organizer of the workshop and Katsuko Hirota who helped me in so many ways.


Speech:   "Soroptimist activity in my hometown"    Eiko SAITO  

     at Soroptimist International Group in West Sacramento     March 19  2003

I would like to  thank  Mrs. Jeri Wingfield, the President of the Soroptimist International, West Sacramento. 


                       

Soroptimist International was founded in 1921 in Oakland, California. Eighty women in professions that included medicine, laboratory technology, education and printing formed the first Soroptimist club to foster the ideal of service. Since 1921, membership has grown to nearly 100,000 women in about 120 countries and territories. Soroptimists today continue the work begun by their predecessors.

The heart of Soroptimist’s mission is to "make a difference for women" through volunteer service to the community. Projects are carefully chosen to address challenges unique to today’s women. Sample club projects include providing minority women with routine medical care, funding domestic violence shelters, sponsoring career development programs for teen mothers, and tutoring women in literacy and basic job skills.                      


                     

Thank you very much for your kind introduction. It is a wonderful opportunity for me to speak in English.

Today, I give a lecture in English. My English skills are far from perfect.

First, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Takashi Saito.

I realized suddenly that I need English conversation skills in order to live in this country.

In the past, I really thought that I couldn't master such things. When I came to Davis,  I heard that Davis IH was going to hold an English conversation class.

So, I went to the English class and met Margaret who is my wonderful English teacher. I would like to thank Margaret who gave me the opportunity to meet many friends in her English class. I am looking forward to seeing her and my classmates every Tuesday morning at Davis IH. 

I have been here in Davis for my sabbatical year since last April and I am going back to Japan at the end of this March. I am living in the apartment in Sacramento because it was not easy to rent a house in Davis. Now I am really enjoying Californian life.             

 


I am a Visiting Professor at the UC Davis, the Department of Computer Science where I am conducting research with Professor Walters whose current research is focusing in the field of computer and Internet support of distance learning project entitled Remote Collaboration Tool. In Japan I am a professor of the School of Social Informatics at Chuo University, in Tokyo. It is one of the largest private universities in Japan. There are 35,000 students and 1,000 faculty.

 

Social Informatics is defined as interdisciplinary fields of research and study that examines social aspects of computerization. In the school of Social Informatics, I teach the specialized knowledge and techniques related to communication services and information systems.

My research areas include digital library, web information retrieval and the information seeking behavior of Internet communities.

Therefore, I would like to talk about " the Internet and society" today.

 

It took 500 years for the computer to follow the printing books such as Gutenberg invention of printing press in 1450. Isn't it remarkable how widespread computers have become in just a few decade?  The first computer was developed in 1946.

Computers and Internet have changed our lives and our societies in so many ways. They have changed the way we communicate.  They have given us free time. There are a lot of good points about computers. We can use it for work, for study or fun.

 

On the other hand, computers brought the technological fears to many people. Computers brought frightening, sophisticated weapons easily available.

You may have heard of cases of Internet Disease, for those people spending too much time using computers are like people dying from an addiction from an alcoholism. And while Internet may have changed the way we communicate, some say that we are not communicating as well. We have less face to face contact.


It is important, therefore, to look at the Internet as a tool, as a tool of freedom. It can be used in many different ways for many different purposes. It is clear that we can use the Internet to free ourselves of busy tasks .

We can do research without leaving our homes. We can take classes at universities without leaving our homes. We can shop without going anywhere.

Our lives have been pushed beyond the traditional barriers of time and space. This is the destination of Remote Collaboration Tool which I am conducting in UC Davis.

 

Internet which provides us movies, books and other forms of media is becoming increasingly available all over the world. Gaining access to them, for example, printed books is becoming cheaper and easier.

However, this cultural access eats away at cultures. Traditional values are being lost, and the computer contributes to this in many ways.

For example, traditional cafes in Paris are going out of business because young people prefer to go to cyber-cafes which means Internet Cafe. Rather than reading a newspaper over a cup of coffee, young people would rather chat with friends in distant parts of the world over a computer screen.


I found such young people in Cusco, Peru which is located in 11,000 elevation highland among the Andes high mountains.

One of my hobbies is to travel to foreign countries. I really like to visit historic places and to meet many people there.

I visited Peru from last Dec-23 to Jan-1 this year. It was very interesting to see the places like Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca. The people in Peru are warm hearted and I spent a wonderful 10 days there.  I stayed mainly at Cusco for visit to the Inca ruins such as Machu Picchu. Cusco was the center of the Inca Empire. Cusco today is a strange mixture of Inca architecture and the Spanish colonial style. It was crowded with  many people in the narrow streets of Cusco.

 

Most of them looked  very poor economically.

First, I thought that there was still a gap between the "Internet haves" and "Internet nots" in our real world.

But I was impressed by many students and young people in Cusco who were

very anxious to get the information from Internet.

Computers and Internet facilities are very expensive for young people there.

 

In Cusco, I was surprised to find that there were so many Internet Cafes.  Many young people can get current information about movies and books from all over the world, even though it is not convenient for them to use library and to buy printed books.

As you know, paper books are more expensive.  On the contrary, Internet can provide them with digital books instead of paper books. Digital books are cheaper and easier. And they would access to the digital libraries  such as MELVYL of UCD  in the world and get digital books.

I enjoyed talking with them about Internet cultures in Internet cafe of Cusco.

I think Internet is now definitely an International language


It is true that we are in danger of creating a gap between the "Internet haves" and "Internet nots" in our real world.

 

This is a famous story about ex-President Bill Clinton's embarrassing moment in a high school classroom in Africa. He lectured the students about going on the Internet, about the need to use the computer, about the need to join the global society, and when he demanded to know why there were no computers in the class, the teacher replied, "There's no electricity in the village".

 

I think that the Internet is pulling countries closer.  Cyber ties by the Internet are working like threads.

Thousands and thousands of Internet webs are joining countries together.

The stronger the connections are, the stronger the likelihood for peace in the future is.

         Thank you very much for listening. 


Acknowledgement:   I would like to thank  the following document which provides source materials of my speech.

    Hiraki Shigeko ed.  Let's Hold Internet Workshops In English.  Tokyo, Koseisha Koseikaku, 2001 

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