Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 20:29:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: Proulx Josee <proulxj@ERE.UMontreal.CA>
Subject: Message From Montreal
To: Editor <editor@educom.edu>
More than the rest of Quebec because of its bilingual quality, Montreal benefits from the meeting of two rich cultures which co-exist, but do not really blend. Most French-speaking Quebecois are unaware of the important contributions of Quebec Anglos in Montreal and worldwide. English-speaking members of the Montreal computer and communications industry have developed many high-quality computer products and innovations. For instance, the Internet tool Archie is a good example of a Montreal innovation. On the other hand, since a lot of the applications developed by French-speaking programmers and engineers are in French, they are used mainly in French-speaking European countries and are not known by their neighboring English counterparts.
Beyond the obvious language divergence, the current political atmosphere in Quebec has influenced the computer industry in several ways. Firstly, in the past computers served as passive data storage tools and performed extensive calculations. Today, the Internet is the vehicle that creates a bridge between other cultures within their reality. It portrays the soul of individuals, corporations, governments, or political or cultural movements.
By merely observing the multitude of messages sent by Quebec internauts in favor of the separation option, it was quite apparent to me that there was a tremendous amount of censorship practiced by their federalist counterparts. It has been said by a prominent Quebec internaut that all Quebec internauts were in favor of the separation. Interestingly enough, after the public's opinion was voiced on Oct. 30, 1995, the day of the referendum, more than 50% of the population did not support separation. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Quebec internauts were not different from the rest of the population. It appears that even if the Internet builds bridges easily between us and the rest of the world, it still has got a long way to go before it unites Quebeckers and Canadians divided by their political opinions.
Secondly, the current political atmosphere brings an increased demand for software and manuals in French. If the current government implements its actual vision, as voiced several months ago at the Sommet de la Francophonie conference in West Africa, all products distributed in Quebec will have to be in French.
In order to protect the French culture and language, it is generally felt that it is more advantageous to promote French businesses that import products rather than purchase those that are English-made. It would, however, be more profitable for computer corporations to design multilingual interfaces that could meet the needs of non-English-speaking as well as English-speaking customers.
The computer industry is evolving not only through its new technology, but also through the computer literacy newly acquired by the general public. This raises many questions about the future role of computer engineers: what will happen to them 20 years from now, when computer literacy will have increased even more?
When I first started my technical training business, corporations and schools were almost exclusively oriented toward word processing training. Some rare ones were interested in programming or networking. The demand was just not there. But with the expansion of the Internet, the traditional computer training offered in most schools and corporations is suddenly transformed: secretaries are learning about the basics of networking and are estimating the size of .gif files. They are now interested in knowing how they can decompress a .Z file on their PC!
This type of activity was completely absent 10 years ago. Computer engineers were the only resource in the company knowledgeable about such technical details, even if it was not strictly programming. Now, they find themselves confronted with a new generation of users who are volunteering their own troubleshooting opinions when something goes wrong on their networks, and some system administrators really don't appreciate what they perceive as an intrusion.
As for programming, I have witnessed an increased interest in the dynamics of programming with the development of the Internet. It seems there are two types of reaction to the Internet: the desire to learn more about highly technical aspects like C++ and TCP/IP protocol, or the quest for extremely easy online tools. Alis Technologies from Montreal has sensed this natural inclination and has just finished developing a new browser that offers a 15-language interface. This new browser will be on the market with other browsers and HTML editors in French.
The development of those tools in one language only brings me to believe that we still have two major perspectives: the culture-closed one and the worldwide-open one. Will we shut down linguistically our cultures by creating impermeable virtual worlds or will we build bridges to benefit from other cultures present online with the help of tools from companies like Alis?
Josee Proulx, a journalist and Internet businessperson in Montreal, is producer and distributor of the French version of Edupage.