Goanet

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Goanet is a mailing list related to the state of Goa, located on the western coast of India. It was started in 1994 by a (then) 17-year-old student Herman Carneiro, and since then has grown into being the most influential mailing list linked to Goa. Counting its secondary mailing list, Goanet-News, both together have a readership of 8000 people each day.

Contents

[edit] History of Goanet

When a few friends started chatting via the Internet in mid-1994, little did they think their light-hearted banter would lead to a network that linked thousands of expatriates from this former Portuguese colony.

Goanet uses old-fashioned technology, that of the mailing-list. Like Usenet Newsgroups (before becoming filled with spam, in particular), mailing lists too can be very useful tools. They're less glamourous than web-sites, at first glance don't seem as obviously useful as e-mail, and definitely not as luring as chat. They're not even buzz words like blogs and wikis currently are. Yet, the simple but priceless tool of mailing-lists, which comes from an earlier Internet era, has an important role to play in the developmental debate of the Third World.

Goanet today acts as a vital cyber-link among the Goan diaspora -- Goans, who come from the tiny region (3700 km² and 1.4 million population currently) along western coastal India, have been a Portuguese colony from 1510 to 1961, for over four and half centuries, and have among the strongest and most-impactful tradition of migration among most South Asian communities.

Spread across two mailing lists, Goanet and Goanet-News, this 12-year-old volunteer-driven free-of-cost venture offers members a chance to get their news, meet old friends, discuss and sometimes fight, and in one case even got married via Goanet.

[edit] An academic perspective

Writing in SOCIAL ANALYSIS: Journal of Cultural and Social Practice on the theme of 'Computer-Mediated Communication ' a Goan-expat Alberto G Gomes takes a detailed 14-page look at Goanet. This article is titled 'Going Goan on the Goa-Net: Computer-Mediated Communications and Goan Diaspora'.

(Reflecting its non-hierarchical and losely-knit network, Goanet has been called GoaNet, Goa-Net, and a range of other terms, varying both the case of the alphabet and the use or non-use of the hyphen in the name. As if this confusion was not enough, there are at least three 'Goanets' in Goa today. Besides this mailing list scattered across cyberspace, the Goa government opted to call its own wide-area network as 'Goanet'. There's another service offering cable connections to the Internet that also calls itself Goanet, and advertises fairly heavily on local TV channels. The currently-preferred spelling is Goanet.)

Explains Gomes: "Not surprisingly, the poor socio-economic conditions prevailing in Goa at the time of Portuguese colonialism served as a push factor for the large-scale emigration of Goans, particularly at the turn of the (19th) century."

In Gomes' words, here's an introduction of Goanet: "The first Internet initiative was the establishment of the Goa-Net, a mailing list of people interested in Goa. It was formally started on the 17th of September 1994 by Herman Carneiro, based in the United States. At the time of writing in February 2000 over a thousand people from all over the world subscribe to the Goa-Net. A large number of subscribers are 'lurkers', a term used to refer to people that only read the postings and do not participate in the discussions. Most are diasporic Goans but there are a growing number of local Goans on the list."

Gomes, who calls him work 'participant observation' of Goanet, says in a two-week period, "the main discussion issues that took up considerable 'space' on the Goa-Net were on: Goan state politics, sex industry in Goa, India-Portugal comparisons (thread titled as 'Sleeping Portugal and Vibrant India') and mental illness in Goa. Interestingly, three out of the four popular topics were related to what is happening in Goa while the one on 'Sleeping Portugal and Vibrant India', as one would expect, was rather polemical and somewhat irrelevant to the current situation in Goa."

He notes that he encountered a range of discussion topics. Says he: "A considerable number of them focused on issues affecting Goan itself such as malaria, tourism, drug problems, ecological problems, and paedophilia while there is the occasional discussion of issues affecting Goans living overseas. For example, several of the Goans living in the US exchanged views on US politics, especially during the presidential elections."

Currently, the rules of Goanet are simple and few. No foul or abusive language, no personal attacks and no name-calling. Spam is, obviously, not allowed. Attachments are not allowed. Use your real name as the sender of the message, with a meaningful subject line. No posts in HTML or MIME. Post only URL with a brief description from a website. No advertisements, and commercial messages have to be paid for. Discussions which go "on endlessly" may be closed. Fundraising on Goanet needs the consent of the Admin team.

Guidelines suggest posting material which is "relevant to Goan communities worldwide" and keeping "your message brief". Private mail isn't to be forwarded without permission of the author. Complaints (over dealings with other members) ought to be brought to the Goanet Admin rather than the entire list. Avoid changing subject lines midway through a discussion, or posting admin-related mail to the entire list.

Some of Goanet's archives are located at the sites below

though because of the shifting of servers on which it was based, and poor archiving possibilities on the Internet, specially for mailing lists, earlier on, much of the early archives seem to be unavailable. This is specially true for the 1994-2000 period.

[edit] Going through the 'mailing list' life-cycle

Goanet went through the typical 'life cycle of mailing lists'. We were first thrilled to get to know each other, and overawed that so much could be achieved by communicating with unknown others over such a distance.

Everyone's enthusiasm, some months down the line, plateaued out. Soon infighting came into play. In some cases, the bitterness was intense. In most episodes, we quickly forgot the harsh words exchanged liberally.

Early on, a handful of us Goa-based journalists saw in Goanet, a great possibility through which to build up alternative news-exchange channels. Not only did we reach out to new readers, but there was scope for a greater freedom of expression -- no editors who's taste one had to fit in with, or others acting as censors of sorts.

Goanet has proven to be a place through which to make friends (and sometimes lose friends), to share ideas, and gain from giving generously. The lesson obviously is: we all have a lot to gain from sharing.

Places like Goanet can be the 'cyber-kudds' of the 21st century. (The 'kudds' were 'clubs' of sorts set up by Goans migrating to bigger cities such as Bombay or Mumbai, where they stayed together, shared experiences and living space, mainly to help newer migrants cope with the harsh realities of the 'new worlds' they were migrating to.

Today too, some derelict 'kudds' exist in parts of downtown Bombay.) Just as an earlier generation of Goans set up places for Goans to stay in the hostile environments of a new city (Bombay), networks with Goanet help to build networks that are mutually beneficial, linking people in cyber terms, across the globe, wherever they might have migrated to.

Today, as things stand, Goanet has some plusses and minues. It lacks sufficient participation from all its membership; like any mailing list it would have about 5-10% of its membership who have ever posted to the list. Women's voices are not much heard. Debates -- which sometimes get too personalised or impolite -- tend to be dominated by the voices of a few. In such a setting, new-comers tend to be wary of introducing themselves. While Goanet does occasionally talk about building 'social capital', there is still an overall lack of understanding of what role such networks can play in networking communities, specially those divided by generations of migration and the distance of continents.

But there are other positives: the spirit of sharing still exists. Goanet remains an interesting place through which to keep informed about things Goan. It offers a mix of news and discussion, while the voluntary and not-for-profit nature of this list has its own advantages.

Goanet has also played its role in inspiring other initiatives. It drove home the point that low-cost, simple-tech tools like mailing lists can play an influential and useful low. In its turn, Goanet has influenced the setting up of a number of other mailing lists, within India and beyond. Some of these include this writer's network at http://www.indialists.org

Take this example: strung together on a shoe-string budget, with loads of volunteer work, an ezine (electronic magazine) brought out by a retired university librarian in the UK is maintaining old links and building new ties among the Goan diaspora widely spread out across the globe. Goanet-UK (since converted to GoanVoiceUK, http://www.goanvoice.org.uk ) is published weekly by former University-College London engineering librarian Eddie Fernandes, who sends it out to an estimated hundreds of readers each week without charge by email. Some months back, the number of 'subscribers' to this list was over 1400.

[edit] Subscribers, etc

Keeping abrest with the latest Net techniques, Fernandes who is in his 'fifties and grew up in Kenya though of Goan origin, scours the globe for every small bit of information he can come across relating to Goa. For a community that has been migrating overseas for a hundred years and more, this throws up a variety of news which otherwise most are simply unaware about.

Updates on one recent issue of this list looked at the local Goan community in the east African city of Mombasa celebrating the 100th anniversary of their club there, and the municipal corporation of Lisbon giving a new purpose-built headquarters for an association of Goans settled there. There were links to the 'Goans of Arusha' (or, GOA), and a goa_youth network set up on www.yahoogroups.com.

Reports meanwhile spoke of how the Goans in Toronto meanwhile have celebrated the feast of sixteenth-century Catholic saint Francis Xavier. (Goa has a significant Catholic minority, and most who migrated internationally from this region are of this religious affiliation, meaning they are often mistakenly not recognised as South Asian.)

This ezine also manages to keep Goans in touch with community events -- whether it's a shopping trip by UK Goans to France , or the Young London Goans Social 'Salsa Nite' organised recently at Middlesex, UK. Treading its unusual path, it breaks new ground in low-cost, community-run media initiatives in a world where the Internet is opening up new possibilities.

[edit] What makes it different?

Other Goa-related ventures have also come up in cyberspace, a few were formed around the same time or earlier than Goanet. 'Goa-Web', an internet site now amalgamated with another site to form 'Goacom' (http://www.goacom.com), was the first elaborate web site devoted to Goan issues and information. Then, there has been 'Goenkar' (http://www.goenkar.com) set up by Joseph "Boogie" Viegas, and currently run by Mario Alvares.

For those interested in research in Goa, there is a website, 'Goa Research Net' (http://www.goenkar.com), which focuses on research themes in Goa. In 1999, there was a proliferation of new web sites with at least six new sites and a number of mergers. A new site called GOYAN (http://www.goacom.com/goyan), which stands for Goan Young Adult Network, was established for young Goans in North America.

While many of the earlier-generation sites pertaining to Goa were clearly directed to non-resident Goans and travelling who might be lured to this coastal destination. Almost all the web sites provide a range of information from news from Goa to advertisements of real estate, hotels, and travel agents in Goa. On yahoogroups.com a search for the word "Goa" would throw up 511 hits (with some false-positives wholly unconnected to Goa).

What makes Goanet different is its non-commercial nature (though admittedly there are other prominent ventures which are also non-commercial), it's ability to run ten years on volunteer-driven lines, and the fact that it seeks to build itself through a participative network.

Volunteers play the main role in keeping Goanet going. In February 2004, the first advertisement on Goanet was accepted, and this is still an insigignificant factor in the network. Appeals have been made to volunteers to help publicise the lists, volunteer their time, encourage "the newer and silent members" to post to the lists, send in email addresses of people who might be interested in signing up, and overall giving feedback.

Dr Alberto Gomes notes that his observations indicate that the majority of people involved in these forms of Goa-related CMC do not disguise their identities. "Involvement in real-life projects and extensive computer-mediated interactions have facilitated the transformation of most members from anonymous cyber-beings into personalities with peculiar characteristics and habits," he writes.

Goanetters have been involved in organising some ventures to benefit their home state -- including campaigning against paedophilia, lobbying for better Internet access, building a computers-for-schools initiative back home, and networking between the diaspora and the resident population in a way it is often easy to overlook. It has acted as a channel for building links among various specialised interests of Goans and a tool for mobilising overseas expat populations.

Carneiro said in an interwith (with this writer, 2004): "Oddly enough, (the launching of Goanet helped) the networking of Goans in the Boston area, and around New England, and now we have the New England Goans Association (in North-Eastern US)."

Asked which was his "most satisfying" moment, he argues: "There is no most satisfying moment. I am most satisfied when I see the community taking full advantage of the list's potential. Whether it be through having good debates, or finding a long-lost friend, so long as the list is lively and being used, I love it."

Gomes has argued: "E-mail and the world-wide web have become so common these days that they are taken for granted particularly in the developed world and relatively affluent classes of society... (But we need to study the role of computer-mediated communication) in the construction and maintenance of cultural identities among Goans, particularly diasporic Goans."

Carneiro guestimates that Goanet is read by expat Goans in about 50 countries globally. Subsequent to the formation of Goanet, other mailing lists have also been set up and host discussions by diasporic Goans. Some like Goa-Goans and GoanCauses (both on Yahoogroups) are general purposes, discussion lists. Others are being set up to focus on certain villages (like Vasco, Sancoale-Cortalim or Saligao) and yet others on issues (education, gardens and horticulture issues, etc).

[edit] External links

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