Thoughts on the Caribbean Blog List

As I accumulated links to place in the Caribbean Blog List, David Sasaki (Global Voices Online) and myself started an email discussion about my post, 'Categorizations and The Internet; Names as Fences - and more Questions than Answers'. You see, I agree with Global Voices Online as an instrument for realizing where the real borders are, and what they are - which may have been unclear. But we also both recognized that there are many entities in the 'Americas'.

Haiti

We discussed a few things - such as the lack of weblogs we could find from Haiti. Haiti has the most expensive internet access in the region, and ranks third in the world (Thanks, Andy, for textifying!). That gives a partial explanation of why weblogs either don't exist from Haiti or are just really hard to find. Maybe one will turn up.

But the other aspect is literacy in Haiti as well. I'm not saying that Haitians are illiterate - it's a language issue for Haitians as well, and there's no Kweyol Google that I can find. French is considered the language of the educated Haitians (according to a few educated Haitians), and English is also a mark of education. So on the internet, Haitians face some severe challenges. Other countries with French and French derived languages are markedly not on these lists at this time...

Habla/Sprechen(sp?)...

Spanish and Dutch, at this time, appear to have one representative each. With Spanish, there may be more but they are certainly hard to find. And Dutch is even more rare. So if anyone knows of these, please let me know.

General Notes

Quite a few weblogs listed are from people of the Caribbean who now live outside the Caribbean. This is an indicator, perhaps, of brain drain, though there is insufficient data to support that beyond my personal opinion. It may also be a factor of cost/availability/dependability of internet access - and it does also signify the lack of internet culture in the region. Someone told me that when phones first 'came' to the Dominican Republic, businessmen still sent runners with messages instead of calling each other because of the cultural inertia. Perhaps this explains this partly as well.

There are also a few webloggers within the region that are not of the region - transplants from more developed countries. While the representation of the nation's culture may not be on par with what a native of the country would write of... perhaps there will be some 'technology transfer'. The Caribbean region has highly intelligent people, and maybe in future we'll see more weblogs of people who are more representative of their own country. This isn't meant to be an offense to those who are weblogging and aren't native, but... I have found, personally, that people who live in a region for a few years mistakenly think that they are experts on the country - and others do as well. On the internet, the squeaky wheel...¹

But non-native bloggers have an important place as well - they serve as bridges to their own native cultures, and that's important in a globe who's apparent size decreases as rapidly as our communication ability increases.² In writing about their own experiences, they introduce things to their own native cultures by means of their readership - and they introduce their own culture into the area where they live. If peaceful progress is to be expected in the world, it's these people - the bridges - who make a difference.

All in all, I am unsatisfied with the list. But webloggers - truly worthwhile webloggers - are rare as a rule. Perhaps we just need to sift through more, or maybe they will show up with time. Either way, more representation of the Caribbean region is needed.

¹Of course, this works both ways. I have cousins who went to college in the United States and think that they are experts on the United States. I have a weird status in all of this because I've lived equally long in the Caribbean and in the United States.
² Some people call it flattening, but that is mathematically inaccurate and I refuse to take part in mathematical inaccuracy. It's an oversimplification of the rate of change of communication as opposed to the static size of the globe. Because of that, there can be no 'flat' - and such thinking leads to further detrimental Booleanism... IMHO. :-)