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Unicode oriented Internet literacy Knowledge is power and the Internet, as a main source of knowledge, bestows upon its users many benefits. Internet has been in use for 15 years and is presently used by about 22 % people of the world. The usage differs from over 70% in North America to less than 1% in sub-Sahara Africa. It is known that most of the Internet users are also economically better off. Keeping a majority of people away from those benefits is not only unfair but also dangerous because it may polarize the Internet haves against have-nots. This could lead to social, economic and other conflicts. Equal opportunity to all will prevent the adverse effects of the Internet divide. The successful implementation of the idea of Unicode oriented Internet literacy will be a step in the direction of promoting prosperity and progress of all. The first step to be taken to implement the Unicode oriented Internet literacy is to select the area and people that are to be targeted. Since India is a multi-lingual country and there are several languages that can be covered, it would be appropriate if initial steps are taken there to implement this idea. Hindi, being the National language of India and the third largest spoken language of the world, may be selected for initial implementation of the Unicode oriented Internet literacy idea. After selecting the area and people, intensive publicity to this idea will be needed. This can be done on Internet itself, through media and through people interested in promoting Internet literacy. Many social institutions, NGOs, some official bodies and non-official organizations engaged in promotion of literacy would also be interested in this idea and their co-operation may be solicited. Major problem to be addressed by the Unicode oriented Internet literacy is the apathy and lack of enthusiasm of people who are literate in their native language but cannot read and write the Roman characters. They will be impressed by the magic of Unicode for converting the Roman text into the script of their native language. They will get hooked to the Unicode. This will enable overcome their apathy to Roman script. They will have jumpstart in using the Internet. Those who are totally illiterate, will be introduced to the Unicode script conversion after they get used to write simple text in Roman characters that they have learnt for typing email and website addresses. Depending upon their progress and enthusiasm, they could be taught the writing system of their native language with the help of Unicode. The main beneficiary of the Unicode oriented Internet literacy will be the new users of Internet. Among the people not using the Internet at present, very large percentage comprises those whose native language is not much used on the Internet. For example, in India, which is a multilingual country, out of 1150 million people only about 50 million have access to Internet. The efforts made so far to increase the use of Internet by people whose language does not use the Roman characters, have not been very successful. Therefore, some different techniques are required to increase the Internet literacy. Others, who will benefit from the increased usage of Internet, will be those who are using it for doing business such as shopping, banking etc. They will have larger market for their business. The first thing to learn for sending email or browsing the World Wide Web on the Internet is the address that is written in Roman characters. People not knowing the Roman characters get discouraged due to the difficulties of learning strange script and another language. This is the main reason why there are so many people who are literate in their native language but cannot use the Internet. Unicode may help in overcoming this problem. Unicode is a character coding system used on the Internet for most of the words languages. During the past few years, Unicode has become the main coding system for Indian languages including Hindi and Urdu. Presently, it covers 75 languages. The consortium that regulates the Unicode is a prestigious body and its members include the Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, IBM, HP etc. and countries such as India and Pakistan. The objective of Unicode oriented Internet literacy is to avoid the complications and difficulties of learning a new writing system of a language. Learning the 26 characters of Roman alphabet, 10 characters for digits and few other symbols such as [.], [@], [/], [\], [:], [-], [?], [;], [_] is sufficient to write any email or the World Wide Web address. As soon as the connection to Internet is made on a computer or mobile phone, the text of any language may be written in Roman characters and converted into any script through the Unicode conversion program. Thereafter, the writing system of any script can be learnt on Internet itself. This approach will inspire self-learning on Internet at one’s own pace. The idea of Unicode oriented Internet literacy is to provide people in
multi-lingual environment a simple and effective method to learn how to use
computers and mobile phones for sending email messages, browsing the World Wide
Web, entertaining themselves and doing many other things on the Internet. The following websites are relevant for the
Unicode and conversion of some languages: |
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