As the Internet penetration gains more strength, India is headed to become a huge force in shaping the digital future of the world, Mark Surman, Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation has said.
“India is a huge force, not only in terms of people coming online, but also shaping what the digital future can be. As we figure out, how people understand web, India absolutely has to be at the core of that,” he said.
As in the next decade, some five to six billion people are expected to gain access to the web. He also stressed on the importance of understanding how the web works.
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Having travelled to India several times, Surman is highly impressed by the talent of Indian techies.
“When I come to India, it is really exciting to see, especially those Mozilla volunteers, that aspiration and see unlock those things to people, and also they want to teach that to the other people across India,” Surman said, adding that India is playing a key role in the recently launched global digital literacy programme of Mozilla.
Mozilla, he said, decided a few years ago that it is not just important to create open source product, that empower people to use the web, but also that everybody in the world understand what they can do on the web.
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Early July, Mozilla launched a two-month global campaign of events known as “Maker Parties” aimed at promoting web literacy.
It will include around 2,000 events in 350 cities worldwide in the coming two months and many of them are taking place in India, which Mozilla describes as a global Internet pioneer.
The Maker Party events give hands-on education to people on everything from learning to write HTML code and build websites to understanding how to protect data and privacy and how to move from being a consumer of the Internet to a producer.
The campaign also includes work on more general topics like gender equality, economic development, and good governance and how to make the web work better in the service of the goals people choose.
It is an utterly unique, ambitious worldwide push for web literacy and India is very much at the centre of it, Surman said.
One of the biggest of the Maker Parties this year is being held in Bangalore in India towards the end of the year, he said, adding that he is planning to attend this.
“This shows the leadership role of the Mozilla community in India,” he said.
Some of the best volunteers of the Mozilla community are from India, who, he said are strong in their skills. The Maker Party, he asserted is about more than coding.
“It is a great call to arms that puts the world’s users at the centre of the web. Success in the 21st century depends on web literacy and on making the web what we all want it to be,” he said.