austraLasia 1546
John's Gospel part 2: eleutheros (Jn 8:32). Setting people free in a digital world
ROME: 30th April 2006 -- I make no pretence to biblical scholarship, but I'll stand my ground within the area of communications. First, though, an interesting historical note - did you know that Martin Luther was actually Martin Luder? After his conversion experience, he changed his surname to 'Luther' because it was akin to the word which Paul (and John) used to express the nature of the freedman, as opposed to the slave - eleutheros.
Centuries later it took someone in the world of blogging and just generally being in touch in the cybersphere to point out that there is a remarkable convergence of thinking between Catholic Social Teaching and the point of view of someone like Richard Stallman, professed atheist and founder of the Free Software Movement.
So where does 'eleutheros' come in to this? I decided to follow up the person who made the comment about the convergence between CST and FSM and even though it appeared on an American-based site (Newsforge) it turns out he lives near Rome! We are subsequently in touch (his name is Marco Fioretti), and I suggest you go to www.eleutheros.it where you can find an English version as well, to find out more. But of special interest is their Manifesto - quite possibly they are not aware that he who chose the name 'Luther' was also for famous for more than one Manifesto! Marco and his group have a meeting with CEI, the Italian Episcopal Commission, in October with some serious and useful suggestions for bringing the Church's practice into line with its language in such areas as reducing the digital divide by creating materials which offer broad, non-cost access. I suggest that we Salesians could think similarly. From here on we bypass John's Gospel and just get practical.
Have you realised that you can do just about everything you normally do on a computer with FLOSS? FLOSS, by the way, means Free (Libre) Open Source Software. The 'libre' is there to remind us that it is 'eleutheros' (free and open) that we are talking about, not necessarily free as in beer. But again, being practical, the material below is also free as in beer! I leave aside the question of operating systems.
Office: OpenOffice.org will do everything, almost, that Microsoft Office will do and at times better. Want to print a normal portrait-sized document as a booklet, landscape and correctly collated for pages - OO.o will do it for you simply. Word processing: you have NO word or even Open Office available with you but you have a permanent connection to the internet - go to Ajaxwrite or Writely or Thinkfree Office online and you'll find you can do document production just the same way, store it, share it with others, save it as .doc, .ppt, .pdf if you need to. Antivirus: Why pay annually for something when you can use Avast! They will ask you to register but not to pay. Browser: No need to convince most people these days that Firefox or Opera or Safari are sensible free options. Email: You can't do much better than Thunderbird. It has few if any security concerns. Data compression: Try 7-zip. It opens more files, faster. Graphics: GIMPshop will do what Photoshop does. PDF: Sure, Acrobat reader is free - but it's heavy. Try Foxit - very fast and free. Want to create a document as PDF? OpenOffice first choice. Otherwise, PrimoPDf or PDFCreator. FTP: Silly to pay when you can use SmartFTP or a dozen others. HTML editing if you do that sort of thing: Nvu. Education online: now we're into big things - Moodle allows the production and distribution of distance education (BoscoWiki is in fact based on the same principle). Web conferencing: did you realise this can be done for free too? It's called WebHuddle. It really could save some airfares! Slides: Instead of the best known proprietary software you can use OO.o Impress. But why not explore one of S5, Slidy or just use the Opera browser? If you have ever got your hands dirty with xhtml, css and javascript it's easy. If you haven't, stick with OO.o Impress.
And I've barely begun: spyware control (Spybot), file encryption (TrueCrypt), mindmapping (Freemind), search and replace (InfoRapid), content analysis(AnSWR), desktop publishing (Scribus, LaTex...)....
But the key question is why we might act in ways described above. Possibly because Communio et Progressio said " the man who wants information must have access to the varied means of social communication" or because the Church and the Internet said "Church leaders are obliged to use the full potential of the computer age...". Proprietary formats and protocols restrict, lock in or even prevent end-users from full access and potential. And we are educators - do we teach the kids just to push buttons or to understand what they are doing? Can we do something practical to reduce the digital divide? We can. Exploring some of the above options is a step in that direction because they are mostly based on a principle of broad access, and I am talking about the nature of the technology, not the fact that they are also free. They are, to put it in a phrase we should recognize, 'David opportunities'. JBF
If you have comment, questions, other information regarding this article why not add it to BoscoWiki austraLasia page.
_______________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com Try out BoscoWiki to be interactive. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml
John's Gospel part 2: eleutheros (Jn 8:32). Setting people free in a digital world
ROME: 30th April 2006 -- I make no pretence to biblical scholarship, but I'll stand my ground within the area of communications. First, though, an interesting historical note - did you know that Martin Luther was actually Martin Luder? After his conversion experience, he changed his surname to 'Luther' because it was akin to the word which Paul (and John) used to express the nature of the freedman, as opposed to the slave - eleutheros.
Centuries later it took someone in the world of blogging and just generally being in touch in the cybersphere to point out that there is a remarkable convergence of thinking between Catholic Social Teaching and the point of view of someone like Richard Stallman, professed atheist and founder of the Free Software Movement.
So where does 'eleutheros' come in to this? I decided to follow up the person who made the comment about the convergence between CST and FSM and even though it appeared on an American-based site (Newsforge) it turns out he lives near Rome! We are subsequently in touch (his name is Marco Fioretti), and I suggest you go to www.eleutheros.it where you can find an English version as well, to find out more. But of special interest is their Manifesto - quite possibly they are not aware that he who chose the name 'Luther' was also for famous for more than one Manifesto! Marco and his group have a meeting with CEI, the Italian Episcopal Commission, in October with some serious and useful suggestions for bringing the Church's practice into line with its language in such areas as reducing the digital divide by creating materials which offer broad, non-cost access. I suggest that we Salesians could think similarly. From here on we bypass John's Gospel and just get practical.
Have you realised that you can do just about everything you normally do on a computer with FLOSS? FLOSS, by the way, means Free (Libre) Open Source Software. The 'libre' is there to remind us that it is 'eleutheros' (free and open) that we are talking about, not necessarily free as in beer. But again, being practical, the material below is also free as in beer! I leave aside the question of operating systems.
Office: OpenOffice.org will do everything, almost, that Microsoft Office will do and at times better. Want to print a normal portrait-sized document as a booklet, landscape and correctly collated for pages - OO.o will do it for you simply. Word processing: you have NO word or even Open Office available with you but you have a permanent connection to the internet - go to Ajaxwrite or Writely or Thinkfree Office online and you'll find you can do document production just the same way, store it, share it with others, save it as .doc, .ppt, .pdf if you need to. Antivirus: Why pay annually for something when you can use Avast! They will ask you to register but not to pay. Browser: No need to convince most people these days that Firefox or Opera or Safari are sensible free options. Email: You can't do much better than Thunderbird. It has few if any security concerns. Data compression: Try 7-zip. It opens more files, faster. Graphics: GIMPshop will do what Photoshop does. PDF: Sure, Acrobat reader is free - but it's heavy. Try Foxit - very fast and free. Want to create a document as PDF? OpenOffice first choice. Otherwise, PrimoPDf or PDFCreator. FTP: Silly to pay when you can use SmartFTP or a dozen others. HTML editing if you do that sort of thing: Nvu. Education online: now we're into big things - Moodle allows the production and distribution of distance education (BoscoWiki is in fact based on the same principle). Web conferencing: did you realise this can be done for free too? It's called WebHuddle. It really could save some airfares! Slides: Instead of the best known proprietary software you can use OO.o Impress. But why not explore one of S5, Slidy or just use the Opera browser? If you have ever got your hands dirty with xhtml, css and javascript it's easy. If you haven't, stick with OO.o Impress.
And I've barely begun: spyware control (Spybot), file encryption (TrueCrypt), mindmapping (Freemind), search and replace (InfoRapid), content analysis(AnSWR), desktop publishing (Scribus, LaTex...)....
But the key question is why we might act in ways described above. Possibly because Communio et Progressio said " the man who wants information must have access to the varied means of social communication" or because the Church and the Internet said "Church leaders are obliged to use the full potential of the computer age...". Proprietary formats and protocols restrict, lock in or even prevent end-users from full access and potential. And we are educators - do we teach the kids just to push buttons or to understand what they are doing? Can we do something practical to reduce the digital divide? We can. Exploring some of the above options is a step in that direction because they are mostly based on a principle of broad access, and I am talking about the nature of the technology, not the fact that they are also free. They are, to put it in a phrase we should recognize, 'David opportunities'. JBF
If you have comment, questions, other information regarding this article why not add it to BoscoWiki austraLasia page.
_______________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com Try out BoscoWiki to be interactive. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml
