Bruno Giussani ha resumido día a día en su blog Lunch over IP el desarrollo de la conferencia TED2006, que se ha celebrado hace unos días en California. [Ethan Zuckerman ha escrito también magníficos y abundantes posts sobre la conferencia].
Giussani, en su post TED2006: New Lens, comenta la intervención del fotógrafo Phil Borges y su proyecto Bridges to Understanding:
For a quarter century Phil Borges, a dentist by training, has been travelling the world documenting endangered indigenous cultures. Here is a picture he took in Tibet.
Borges' life project is to promote and preserve cultural diversity. His photographic work has the force of beauty and the infinite depth of the human spirit. "Of the 6000 languages spoken in the world today, 3000 are not spoken by the children, which means that we are halving our linguistic diversity", he says starting his speech. "Every week an elderly goes to the grave taking along the last spoken words of that culture", he adds. He shows examples (Tibet, the Kalash in Pakistan, etc) and explains how this led to the creation of Bridges to Understanding, a project electronically linking children from around the world through digital storytelling. He ends showing a moving film made by a student in Guatemala, "Mis Sentimientos" (QuickTime), about a village destroyed by a mudflood.
Lo mejor del proyecto, además de su calidad artística, es que no pretende preservar las culturas como algo muerto colocado en un museo para disfrute(?) de visitantes. Su objetivo es utilizar la tecnología para crear una comunidad viva y global en la que sean los niños (los únicos que pueden asegurar el futuro de las culturas) los que compartan experiencias y sentimientos.
