Towards a global conversation

Abstract

The Internet came into the world in earnest a little more than twenty years ago, and it came with a vengeance, criss-crossing the planet with invisible ties of connectedness and seemingly heralding a new era in global communication. From one day to the next, you could correspond with colleagues and friends on the other side of the planet; you could read newspapers from Australia and Botswana; you could join special interest groups and build professional networks. It was an exhilarating time for many of us, one which appeared to hold out a promise of truly global communication for the first time in human history. But, as we academics are prone to say, things were more complicated than that. The world did not become flat just like that; it remained round and bumpy. Most Internet use remained local, restricted by language skills and concerns with the domestic sphere. Large parts of the world population, most glaringly in Africa, remained offline. The technology was available, but not to all, and not in equal measure. Besides, as has become increasingly evident over the years global communication can often exacerbate tension and conflict. The global village is not a teashop. At least not all the time. Oscar Hemer and I had shared an interest in globalisation and technology since the early 1990s, when we co-convened a study circle in the Nordic Summer University on the globalisation of culture. We both wrote about the potentials and pitfalls of increased global connectedness, and even co-edited a small book on ambivalence and fundamentalism -Ambivalens og fundamentalisme, Spartacus 1999-with contributions from people who had taken part in the NSU group. It was around this time that Oscar started the ComDev programme, based on a cosmopolitan vision of a transnational conversation that could make a difference, and which was almost overnight made far easier than before thanks to the new technologies. Oscar managed to obtain some external funding from SIDA and began to recruit students, and the staff began to grow. Notably, he got the technological whiz kid Micke Rundberg on board, who soon set about developing user-friendly platforms for communication in real time, eventually enabling students located in remote places to communicate almost seamlessly with those who were in Malmö. Student recruitment was not only good, but increasingly transnational and intercontinental, and it has remained so till this day. ComDev was path-breaking when it began, and it remains unusual, innovative and important today, bringing together people from around the world with shared interests, engaging world-class lecturers and guest speakers – Orhan Pamuk visited in the early days, Achille Mbembe more recently – and using state-of-the-art technology to hold the whole project together. Oscar and his collaborators have also managed to organise ComDev seminars in enticing and intellectually challenging abroad, from Sarajevo to Durban.