Saturday, November 20, 2010

DES BITS ET DES ORDURES


L'avantage d'un blog est de pouvoir faire des raccourcis et ne pas perdre trop de temps à faire de longs textes pour exprimer ses idées. Alors allons y dans le genre bref, mais percutant, sur le sujet "c'est quoi concrètement la fracture numérique ?"

Le tableau World Data montre de façon très claire le nombre l'importance des flux informatiques journaliers. "Almost everything we do is reduced to bits and sent through cables around the world at light speed. But just how much data are we generating? This is a look at just some of the massive amounts of information that human beings create every day."

Le tableau Digital Dump montre, lui, la face cachée de nos vies numériques, celle des déchets que nous exportons dans les pays pauvres. "As technology advances and we build more and more devices, the number of obsolete electronics in need of disposal is growing as well. The issue of global e-waste is a mounting concern. And as the problem piles up, many countries are finding it easiest to just ship their e-waste overseas."


Les photos ci-dessous sont l'illustration du tableau ci-dessus. Elles sont extraites de la série Permanent Error réalisée par le sud-africain Pieter Hugo à Accra, la capitale du Ghana.


"The UN Environment Program has stated that Western countries produce around 50 million tons of digital waste every year. In Europe, only 25 percent of this type of waste is collected and effectively recycled. Much of the rest is piled in containers and shipped to developing countries, supposedly to reduce the digital divide, to create jobs and help people. In reality, the inhabitants of dumps like Agbogbloshie survive largely by burning the electronic devices to extract copper and other metals out of the plastic used in their manufacture. The electronic waste contaminates rivers and lagoons with consequences that are easily imaginable."


"The area, on the outskirts of a slum known as Agbogbloshie, is referred to by local inhabitants as Sodom and Gomorrah, a vivid acknowledgment of the profound inhumanity of the place. When Hugo asked the inhabitants what they called the pit where the burning takes place, they repeatedly responded: ‘For this place, we have no name’."