When Spirit, Money and Technology come together... A Visit to the "Cultural Foundation" in Abu Dhabi A Report Contrary to wide-spread opinion, the countries at the Arab Gulf are not a cultural desert. Of course, the cultural roots of old civilizations like Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq reach far deeper into the soil of history. In accordance, the amount of cultural production in these countries is large. But the young states at the Persian Gulf - or how they call it: the Arab Gulf -, too, are culturally active and promote refreshing, innovative projects which make use of the possibilities of modern technology in a consequent and unbiased way. An example for this is the "Cultural Foundation" in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This non-profit organization has set itself the aim of spreading Arab cultural heritage by ways of new media. The artful interior of the foundation provides a home for a library, rooms for exhibitions, projections and conferences and hosts the annual book fair. One of the ongoing projects is the setting to music of Arabic literature ("Audio Book"). Considering the high rate of illiteracy and the prevalent oral tradition in the Arab world, these audio cassettes are not only for convenience. The circumvention of script pulls down the wall between those unable to read and literature itself. By the way, the audio books can also be downloaded via the internet. A project of encyclopaedic dimensions is the lexicon of Arabic poetry which provides online access to the most important lines written in Arabic. A project not less ambitious is the alwarraq. This website contains now more than 1,000,000 pages of Arabic literature which can be read and downloaded free of charge. The information is not available merely as a scanned picture as in many other web offers. The text is instead digitized and can be browsed using keywords. An Arabic keybord integrated into the website even allows access of these pages to users of Western word-processing programmes. The cultural "entrepreneur" behind all those projects is Mohamed Ahmed Al Suweidi. The Secretary General of the "Cultural Foundation" has a charismatic personality. With eyes wide awake, a calm voice and in good English, he describes his passion: to give the experience of the large Arabian heritage to all social strata. Equipped with this age-old tradition of coping with the world in an open-minded, self-confident way is how today's generations should take part at the world's culture. Modern technology and in particular the internet create the material infrastructure for conveying this knowledge. And in the United Arab Emirates, money is not a factor that will hinder the conversion of these ideas. Although the tiresome word "globalization" had not been mentioned, one central and driving motive stands out behind the numerous enterprises of the "Cultural Foundation": taking part at world culture on the solid ground of one's own culture. Acting in this way is not easy for the Arab world, being in a defensive and even rejective position after having experienced colonialism and inferiority towards the Western world in military, technological and also civilisatory respect. The anti-model promoted by the "Cultural Foundation" is one of a self-confident, cosmopolitan and active position in the world. In the end, this also reflects the general political climate in the Emirates which collect resources from all over the world and create the conditions which allow them to develop and produce new things and ideas. Therefore, the small, but dynamic Emirates can in fact be regarded as the winners of globalization. Difficult and sometimes even obstructed political and cultural debates can be revived by a projection into history. The project "Arabian Travellers" is up to this and even more. The idea is simple: to collect travel writings of world-wide Arabian travellers in a series of publications. The material available is seemingly inexhaustible. Many reports are well-known, many others are out of print, and there is a huge number which have remained unedited or undiscovered up to now. The editor of the series, the Syrian author and publisher Nuri Jarrah, presented the 15 books already printed on Abu Dhabi's book fair and reported about the further 1,000 existing documents of this kind. Among them, for example, the report of the first Arabian traveller to North America (1683-68). The series is to be continued. For those documents bearing witness to journeys of Arabians to Northern Europe and especially to German-speaking countries, the Cultural Foundation is looking for partners among publishers, cultural institutions and scholars. Correspondence is to be directed to the email address of the Cultural Foundation: info@ns1.cultural.org.ae At the end of this travel report from the Emirates, the latest and probably most monumental project of the Cultural Foundation should not be left out: "The golden web". Behind this phrase stands nothing less than the project of developing an interactive encyclopedia of world history. Consulted by Cambridge University for its content and technically realized by the Emirates multimedia firm Cosmos, a prototype has been developed during several years' work. The golden web works as a multilingual, user-friendly system of documents in which not only texts, but also maps, visual- and audio-documents convey information. The history of civilizations of this world including their interactions is presented. The net is navigable and important travellers act as agents between the centres of the globe. Via a search engine, topics like "water" or "education" can be shown in a presentation through the ages or through geographic space. This comprehensive project shows the encyclopaedic spirit of the 18th and 19th century and uses the advantages of 21st century information technology. It is planned to go online in 2004 and will be further developed continually with international cooperation. The "Cultural Center" is currently looking for partners from the sector of culture and science (info@ns1.cultural.org.ae).