THE INTERMED NETWORK
Developing a cooperative network for the
information society in the EuroMediterranean context.
L.Navarro. - UPC. Associate Professor
Technical Director of Pangea, a local APC node. leandro@ac.upc.es
G.Rodriguez - UPC. Researcher.
Aleph designer
gerard@ac.upc.es
A.Serra - UPC. Anthropologist. Ph.D.
Co-ordinator of Catalan Chapter of ISOC
artur @ac.upc.es
Contact Point: Artur Serra.
Tel: +34-3-4017182
fax.+34-3-4017055
Key words: Information Society, Internet, International Cooperation in
the Mediterranean,
Civil Society, Large Scale CSCW system, Aleph technology.
INTER-MEDITERRANEAN, InterMed, ( http://aleph.pangea.org/intermed) is
a co-operative
network of projects between research institutions, companies, administrations
and civil organisations in order to accelerate the developing of the global
information society in this
region.We stress the importance of the INTERNET technology as a common language
for all
this effort. The InterMed key ideas are:
- -Information Society
- -Internet technology and applications
- -North/South , East/West cooperation in the Mediterranean -Civil Society
leadership.
InterMed was started with an international conference last January, in Barcelona
. Eighty
participants, from 12 different Mediterranean countries, from Bosnia to
Morocco, from ANP to
Israel, as well as representative of international
organisations as the EU, or co-operation networks as the local chapters
of ISOC and local nodes
of APC are gathering to start up a framework of telematics co-operation
in the region.
We considered the Internet technology as the common language to building
this cooperation.
The richness and the live of the Internet revolution is in his distribution
world-wide and an
increasing regional diversification. In that sense InterMed network is a
regional open electronic
space for economic commerce, education projects, civic initiatives, and
technological transfer
and co-operation.
Current project on the preliminary stage are: -MEDAgrinet, a project to
build a network of
agricultural extension services in the Mediterranean, leaded by Dov Winner
from Israel (dovw@mofet.macam98.ac.il). -MIP, Mediterranean Inventory Project,
an iniciative to establish a Mediterranean Inventory of Information Society
related projects, as part of the G7's Global Inventory Project iniciative.
-Finally we are organizing a Mediterranean Academic Network association
(MANA), as the CEEnet in the Central and Eastern European countries, an
association of the academic networks of the Mediterranean countries.
Our design is to build an open community in the region based in the federation
of IP networks
in the region, sharing not only Internet basic protocols or general WWW
technology but specific
services design for a region which combine enormous economic, social and
cultural differences.
InterMed tries to be the kernel of this open electronic space, an space
of cooperation for a
culture of change and openess.
Technologically, our current project system is based in a federation of
Web servers doing as a
Network Information Centres for the region, based in Aleph a federated search
engine that
allows to introduce and get information about the state of Web pages, users,
projects,etc.
concerning our region. Finally a set of several mailing lists allows to
share information and
projects.
The Aleph technology was developped in the EU ESPRIT COMIC project on CSCW
(1992-
1995) (Navarro,L, Rodriguez,G 1995, Serra, A.1995)
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