Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Finding our roots on the Internet - ICANN conference brings hope to Africa
By Haru Mutasa, Highway Africa News Agency (HANA)
Imagine exploring cyberspace and wading through mountains of information in Kiswahili, Amharic or the Ghanaian language Twi efficiently and as easily as you would in English.
This is just one of many exciting developments being thrashed out at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) conference which kicks off in Cape Town South Africa today.
At the Cape Town conference, Internet gurus from around the world are debating topical, Internet related issues and methods of lowering the threshold to access for all. This last goal - briding the digital divide - is one of the key objectives identified at last year's World Summit on the Information Society.
Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), a revolutionary way of enabling countries to use their own languages and alphabets in the domain name allocation procedure, is one way of bridging this divide. The establishment of IDNs will go a long way toward preserving languages and cultures particulary in third world countries.
At the ICANN meeting in Kuala Lumpur last July, delegates debated how Asian scripts can be used in internet addresses. Now it's Africa's turn and in Cape Town an array of workshops on IDNs and other internet related activities has been spread throughout the conference. These hands-on sessions will feature test beds and showcase real life global success stories.
While workshops assist delegates at the conference with practical skills, plenary sessions and panel discussions will look at technical and policy issues on IDNs such as browser compatibility, adequate technical support and policy issues.
Africa's soon to be created Regional Internet Registry (RIR), the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) , promises to spark heated debate on these and other issues as the continent looks forward to setting up structures for assigning its own Internet addresses to users in their own languages.
Domain Name Systems (DNS) help users find their way around the Internet. Every computer on the Internet has a unique address called its "IP address" (Internet Protocol address) and because IP addresses (which are strings of numbers) are hard to remember, DNS allow familiar strings of letters (the "domain name" to be used instead. Therefore instead of typing "192.0.34.65", you can type www.icann.org or, in the near future, an address in the South African language Zulu.
The annual conference, which ends on Sunday December 5, will be broadcast live via webcam on ICANN's website www.icann.org.
ICANN, a non-profit organisation founded in 1998, is responsible for managing, coordinating and regulating the internet by assigning domain names.
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By Haru Mutasa, Highway Africa News Agency (HANA)
Imagine exploring cyberspace and wading through mountains of information in Kiswahili, Amharic or the Ghanaian language Twi efficiently and as easily as you would in English.
This is just one of many exciting developments being thrashed out at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) conference which kicks off in Cape Town South Africa today.
At the Cape Town conference, Internet gurus from around the world are debating topical, Internet related issues and methods of lowering the threshold to access for all. This last goal - briding the digital divide - is one of the key objectives identified at last year's World Summit on the Information Society.
Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), a revolutionary way of enabling countries to use their own languages and alphabets in the domain name allocation procedure, is one way of bridging this divide. The establishment of IDNs will go a long way toward preserving languages and cultures particulary in third world countries.
At the ICANN meeting in Kuala Lumpur last July, delegates debated how Asian scripts can be used in internet addresses. Now it's Africa's turn and in Cape Town an array of workshops on IDNs and other internet related activities has been spread throughout the conference. These hands-on sessions will feature test beds and showcase real life global success stories.
While workshops assist delegates at the conference with practical skills, plenary sessions and panel discussions will look at technical and policy issues on IDNs such as browser compatibility, adequate technical support and policy issues.
Africa's soon to be created Regional Internet Registry (RIR), the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) , promises to spark heated debate on these and other issues as the continent looks forward to setting up structures for assigning its own Internet addresses to users in their own languages.
Domain Name Systems (DNS) help users find their way around the Internet. Every computer on the Internet has a unique address called its "IP address" (Internet Protocol address) and because IP addresses (which are strings of numbers) are hard to remember, DNS allow familiar strings of letters (the "domain name" to be used instead. Therefore instead of typing "192.0.34.65", you can type www.icann.org or, in the near future, an address in the South African language Zulu.
The annual conference, which ends on Sunday December 5, will be broadcast live via webcam on ICANN's website www.icann.org.
ICANN, a non-profit organisation founded in 1998, is responsible for managing, coordinating and regulating the internet by assigning domain names.
