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Institute for Global Communications (IGC) |
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IGC's vision is to actively promote change toward a healthy society, which is founded on the principals of social justice, broadly shared economic opportunity, a robust democratic process, and sustainable environmental practices. IGC believes that healthy societies rely fundamentally on respect for individual rights, the vitality of communities and diversity. IGC's aim is to advance the work of progressive organizations and individuals for peace justice economic opportunity, human rights, democracy and environmental sustainability through strategic use of online technologies.
History
In 1987 the Institute for Global Communications was officially formed to manage PeaceNet and the newly acquired EcoNet, which was the world's first computer network dedicated to environmental preservation and sustainability. In 1988 IGC began to collaborate with like-minded organizations outside the states and in partnership with six international organizations, IGC co-founded the Association of Progressive Communications (APC).
ConflictNet, incorporated by IGC in 1989, to provide information and communications for people by promoting the constructive resolution of conflicts is now enfolded in the PeaceNet network. LaborNet, a full network of IGC from 1992 through August 1999, serves the labor community by working for the human rights and economic justice of workers. WomensNet, launched in 1995 is an online community of individuals and organizations who use computer technology to advance the interests of women worldwide. Also the Anti-racism.Net forms part of IGC network family.
Strategies and Policies
IGC's aim is to offer progressive individuals and groups a place on the Internet to learn, meet and organize. IGC focuses on content, information sharing and collaborative tools and provides Internet access services, e-mail discussions and newsletters. The Institute for Global Communications aims at bringing Internet tools and online services to organizations and activists working on peace, economic and social justice, human rights, environmental protection, labor issues and conflict resolution. IGC also provides alternative news and political analysis as well as information about other progressive organizations.
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Expert system
Expert systems are advanced computer programs that mimic the knowledge and reasoning capabilities of an expert in a particular discipline. Their creators strive to clone the expertise of one or several human specialists to develop a tool that can be used by the layman to solve difficult or ambiguous problems. Expert systems differ from conventional computer programs as they combine facts with rules that state relations between the facts to achieve a crude form of reasoning analogous to  artificial intelligence. The three main elements of expert systems are: (1) an interface which allows interaction between the system and the user, (2) a database (also called the knowledge base) which consists of axioms and rules, and (3) the inference engine, a computer program that executes the inference-making process. The disadvantage of rule-based expert systems is that they cannot handle unanticipated events, as every condition that may be encountered must be described by a rule. They also remain limited to narrow problem domains such as troubleshooting malfunctioning equipment or medical image interpretation, but still have the advantage of being much lower in costs compared with paying an expert or a team of specialists.
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