#Founder of Windows on Haiti, a source of positive information about Haitian
culture
*Interview of November 22, 1999
= Can you tell us about Windows on Haiti?
At the end of April 1998, I launched an Internet site, simple in concept, but
ambitious in its reach and overall scope. The site aims to be a major source of
information about Haitian culture, and a tool to counter the persistently
negative images of Haiti from the traditional media. The scope of this effort
extends beyond mere commentary to the diversity of arts and history, cuisine and
music, literature and reminiscences of traditional Haitian life. It is
punctuated by a different sort of guestbook where the visitor's personal
testimony of his ties to Haiti is highly encouraged. In short, the site opens
some new windows to the culture of Haiti.
= What exactly is your professional activity?
For the past 20 years, my professional activity has consisted of working with
computers in various areas: system design, programming, networking,
troubleshooting, assembling PCs, and web design. Finally, my primary web site,
which has almost overnight become a hub of connectivity between diverse groups
and individuals interested in Haitian culture, has propelled me into a
quasi-professional activity of information gathering, social commentary,
editorial writing, and evangelism for the culture of Haiti.
= How did using the Internet change your professional and personal life?
The Internet has greatly changed both my professional and personal life. Due to
the constant flow of information, I sleep very much less now than I used to. But
the greatest change has been in the multiplicity of contacts in cultural,
academic, and journalistic circles, as well as with ordinary people around the
globe, that this activity has provided me. As a result, I am now a lot more
aware of professional resources around the world, related to my activity, and of
the surprising level of international fascination with Haitian culture,
religion, politics, and literature. On a personal level, this also means that I
have quite a few more friends than before I immersed myself in this particular
activity.
= How do you see your professional future?
I see my professional future as an extension of what I do currently: using
technology to enhance intercultural exchanges. I hope to associate myself with
the right group of people to go beyond Haiti, and advance towards this ideal of
one world, one love.
= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?
The debate will continue forever, as information becomes more conspicuous than
the air that we breathe and more fluid than water. These days, one can purchase
the video of a film that was released just the week before, and it will not be
long before one can watch scenes from one other's private life over the Net
without his/her knowledge. What is daunting about the Internet is that so many
are willing to do the dirty work for free, as sort of an initiation rite. This
mindset will continue to exert increasing pressures on the issues of copyrights
and intellectual property.
Authors will have to become a lot more creative in terms of how to control the
dissemination of their work and profit from it. The best that we can do right
now is to promote basic standards of professionalism, and insist at the very
least that the source and authorship of any work be duly acknowledged.
Technology will have to evolve to support the authorization process.
= How do you see the growth of a multilingual Web?
Very positively. It is true that for all intents and purposes English will
continue to dominate the Web. This is not so bad in my view, in spite of
regional sentiments to the contrary, because we do need a common language to
foster communications between people the world over. That being said, I do not
adopt the doomsday view that other languages will just roll over in submission.
Quite the contrary. The Net can serve, first of all, as a repository of useful
information on minority languages that might otherwise vanish without leaving a
trace. Beyond that, I believe that it provides an incentive for people to learn
languages associated with the cultures about which they are attempting to gather
information. One soon realizes that the language of a people is an essential and
inextricable part of its culture.
From this standpoint, I have much less faith in mechanized tools of language
translation, which render words and phrases but do a poor job of conveying the
soul of a people. Who are the Haitian people, for instance, without "Kreyòl"
(Creole for the non-initiated), the language that has evolved and bound various
African tribes transplanted in Haiti during the slavery period? It is the most
palpable exponent of commonality that defines us as a people. However, it is
primarily a spoken language, not a widely written one. I see the Web changing
this situation more so than any traditional means of language dissemination.
In Windows on Haiti, the primary language of the site is English, but one will
equally find a center of lively discussion conducted in "Kreyòl". In addition,
one will find documents related to Haiti in French, in the old colonial creole,
and I am open to publishing others in Spanish and other languages. I do not
offer any sort of translation, but multilingualism is alive and well at the
site, and I predict that this will increasingly become the norm throughout the
Web.
= What is your best experience with the Internet?
People. The Web is an interconnected network of servers and personal computers,
at the keyboard of which you will find a person, an individual. This has
afforded me the opportunity of testing my ideas, acquiring new ones, and best of
all, of forging personal friendships with people far away and eventually meeting
them.
= And your worst experience?
People. I do not want to expand on that, but some personalities simply have a
way of getting under your skin.
*Interview of June 29, 2001
= What has happened since our last interview?
Since our last interview, I have accepted the position of Director of
Communications and Strategic Relations for Mason Integrated Technologies, a
company whose main objective is to create tools for communications, and the
accessibility of documents created in the world's minority languages. Due to the
board's experience in the matter, Haitian Creole (Kreyol) has been a prime area
of focus. Kreyol is the only national language of Haiti, and one of its two
official languages, the other being French. It is hardly a minority language in
the Caribbean context, since it is spoken by eight to ten million people.
Aside from those responsibilities, I have taken the promotion of Kreyol as a
personal cause, since that language is the strongest of bonds uniting all
Haitians, in spite of a small but disproportionately influential Haitian elite's
disdainful attitude to adopting standards for the writing of Kreyol and
supporting the publication of books and official communications in that
language. For instance, there was recently a two-week book event in Haiti's
Capital and it was promoted as "Livres en folie". Some 500 books from Haitian
authors were on display, among which one could find perhaps 20 written in
Kreyol. This is within the context of France's major push to celebrate
francophony among its former colonies. This palys rather well in Haiti, but
directly at the expense of creolophony.
What I have created in response to those attitudes are two discussion forums on
my web site, Windows on Haiti, held exclusively in Kreyol. One is for general
discussions on just about everything but obviously more focused on Haití's
current socio-political problems. The other is reserved only to debates of
writing standards for Kreyol. Those debates have been quite spirited and have
met with the participation of a number of linguistic experts. The uniqueness of
these forums is their non-academic nature. Nowhere else on the Net have I found
such a willing and free exchange between experts and laymen debating the merits
and standards for a language in that language itself.
= How much do you still work with paper?
As little as possible, which is still a lot. If I am dealing with a document
that I want to preserve for future reference, I always print it and catalog it.
It may not be available when I am away from my home office, but when I am there,
I like the comfort of knowing that I can reach for it in a physical sense, and
not rely solely on electronic backup, the reliability of the operating system,
or my ISP (Internet service provider) for Internet access. So, for what I
consider worth preserving, there is a fair amount of redundancy, and paper still
has its place.
= What do you think about e-books?
Sorry, I haven't tried them yet. Perhaps because of this, it still appears to me
like a very odd concept, something that the technology made possible, but for
which there will not be any wide usage, except perhaps for classic reference
texts. High school and college textbooks could be a useful application of the
technology, in that there would be much lighter backpacks to carry. But for the
sheer pleasure of reading, I can hardly imagine getting cozy with a good e-book.
= What is your definition of cyberspace?
It's literally the newest frontier for mankind, a place where everyone can claim
his place, and do so with relative ease and a minimum of financial resources,
before heavy inter-governmental regulations and taxation finally set in. But
then, there will be another.