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Social Changes & Internet Access In The Third World
DiZNoG asks: "I'm curious about the social acceptability of Internet access and use in third-world countries such as Pakistan and Ethiopia. I realize that actually starting an ISP in these places would be difficult technologically, but what are the social implications? We here in the U.S. have become accustomed to the Net, but what about those in less-developed countries? How would society react to such technology? And how about those countries' governments? Do any of your readers have any information?" In addition to monetary reasons, there seems to be some degree of "cultural friction" when it comes to adopting Internet access in many regions of the world. Your thoughts?
I am not sure it is really worth going into too much depth on this topic. This seems like the kind of thing someone brings up at a party just to start conversation. However, I will throw in my own 2 cents.
One major issue I think worth mentioning is the leap-frog effect. Under-developed countries are able to jump into to a new market with the best technology, passing by outmoded forms. The example I am most familiar with is Brazil (although large and rich as third world countries grow, it still has large numbers of very poor, starving, and barefoot people). It is far cheaper in Brazil to get a cellular phone than a regular phone, and I have never seen so many cell phones in my life as in Brazil. Taxi drivers and maids alike all had them. This is because it is cheaper to put up a cell-tower than it is to lay hundreds of miles of regular land line. Since, the telecommunications infrastructure is lacking in the boondocks, they have just adopted cellular technology. I saw a man driving a donkey cart talking on a cellphone. Talk about culture shock. Third World countries that do invest in internet technology, will at least have the fortune of avoiding many of our (in the US) mistakes.
As far as the social impact, I think that certainly depends on the government and the culture of the country involved. It will always turn out that that freedom of information will win in the long run, despite growing pains along the way. China should learn from this, and their focus on their manned spaceflight program shows how far behind the United States they are.
Taking another example from Brazil, a country known for its sociable people, I would mention the popularity of IRC. It is huge with Brazilian young people, and it is becoming increasingly so with people from 2nd and 3rd world countries around the globe.
People in other countries will end up doing the same things people in the US do. They will use the Internet to talk to each other. This is what the average user does. Maybe they will look at a little porn, maybe buy some stuff from eBay or whatever is the analog in the language of their choice, but in the end it will popular for the same reason AOL is popular, things like Chat Rooms. Just like the Internet is, in the end, popular because of things like /.
"Politics is for the moment, an equation lasts eternity" -A. Einstein
I would recommend looking at Grameen's work in this area. Grameen Bank was started by Mohammed Yunnus (sp?!), and economist from Bangladesh, who realized that all his hifalutin theories were not relavant to the impoverished women next door to his university. He began a micro-lending institution which has grown to an international institution. Really terrific stuff, see his book "Banker To the Poor".
The relevancy to this topic: Grameen has gotten into telecommunications and the Internet lately, but maintained a focus on the classically impoverished portions of society. Witness the "cell-phone lady", who is a woman in a village who owns a cellphone and charges others a small fee to use it to call other villages, where another "cell-phone lady" provides a similar service.
Incidentally, wireless networking is a very good solution in third world countries, where landlines have a nasty habit of being torn down, possibly for use as scrap copper...
see www.grameen.org for more.
excellent topic, by the way.
nathan
*urp!*
While I am no expert, I can see that the biggest cultural shock is the freedom of speech that the internet fosters. Many of these countries' local governments have tight controls over the news and telecommunication media. The internet is new ground, practically uncontrollable (unless we all fall asleep). The upside and downside is that everyone would generally benefit from the free availability of information; it is up to each country to adapt to the rules of the game.
Even though I don't live there any more I visit regularly and keep well informed of affairs through regular phone calls and emails with my mom.
In Nigeria the government sanctioned minimum wage was recently (actually about 1 year ago) increased to about $50 a month. Even though there is great wealth in the country it is disproportionately distributed with a few being mega-rich, some living at subsistence level and millions living below UN poverty levels. In countries like Nigeria the Internet is far from being a social phenomenon and is seen more as a business tool for those that can afford it (banks, oil companies, etc.) or as a plaything for the rich. The average individual has little access to potable water, electricity and telephones let alone a high bandwidth connection and a PC. Most people who need to use the internet go to business centres (places like Kinkos) and pay per minute to check their hotmail or send email to relatives who live too far away to call.
The internet may be ubiqituos and a way of life here (i.e. the US) but this is a far cry from what is happening in third world countries.
India is probably the leader in not only the less
developed world, but also most of Asia for getting
net technology out on the streets- they have some problems like a severely overregulated telecom industry however, bascially crippling the infrastructure (they keep saying this will change in a few years, but I have not seen any real progress).
Socially speaking, the uneducated and to a large extent, the older generation in any country
will take a very long time to derive the full benefits or realize the full impacts of (liberating) technology- this is as true in the U.S. where the dribbling milksop masses are still thinking of the net as a replacement for the Home Shopping Network. The same holds true for much of India- the majority of the middle and upper class think of computers and the internet as something for their young.
On the other token, where it has caught on, it has caught on like wildfire- Bangalore (India's equivalent of Silicon Valley) is a good example of it. Bangalore used to be a smallish dusty town in South India. It has now expanded into an economic tiger, with streets lined with Indian intelligentsia, and internet cafes and hardware shops crammed in nooks and crannies in slum-ridden alleys in a expanding radius around M.G. road (Bangalore's equivalent of El Camino Real, or the Chelsea district in Silicon Alley). It is now one of India's more progessive cities in terms of attitudes towards women, religion, inebriants, etc. On the same token, the increase in wealth has caused questionable materialism to popup- the only American style malls in India (last I visited).
On a large scale, the net effect in the current economic situation is kind of a hyper-globalization: You can see this by the amount of American influence in Bangalore and the Indian influence in say, Santa Clara or Cupertino in Silicon Valley.
This globalization is kind of a new Cambrian explosion of memes that are not geographically centralized- its unlike colonialism or imperialism in which there is a controlling authority and a predominant meme, but rather, many similar attitudes on what was previously on the "fringe" of a culture (in terms of sexuality, religion, politics) now pop up in disparate regions. In other words: A San Francisco geek probably has a lot more in common with an Calcutta geek than a San Francisco geek has in common with a Kansas City non-geek. Whether this is good or bad- whether our global diversity level is declining or whether there is an explosion in individual choice- has yet to be seen IMHO. One thing I can say for sure is that the phenomena of people who are wired breaking political, cultural, and economic boundaries is not an American phenomena (all the more reason we need to fight tooth an nail to keep expanding our freedoms).
Economically, India is experiencing an upsurge due o the expansion of technology in its borders. This is leading towards a burgeoning middle class, and a general hope for the next generation.
All in all, the impact of tech on India is straight out of a William Gibson novel- its a country in which 5000 years of history is not going to go away, but instead is marrying the the modern world, and producing something truly weird. It is definately a trip hanging out in a net cafe in New Delhi, when you see several cows wandering by the window, alongside the beggars, sanyasis, businessmen, all choking in the same haze caused by the coal driven smokestack power plants in the center of the city.
The parental units in India are enthusiastic for their children- they see the Internet as a way for their children to start getting out of poverty. The government is taking the same attitude. This is probably unusual for most third world countries at large, since India has always had a high degree of respect and tolerance for diversity and complexity (things that the internet bring along with it), and generally has an anarchistic attitude on life.
I am definately interested in hearing what other people have observed so far in this process- in particular with religion: How are strict Hindhu, Christians, and Muslims handling the internet and its open views on the world? This question applies particularly to more closed off countries like Pakistan and Myannamar.
... Just some random thoughts.
I honestly have no idea how other countries will deal with the internet. Countries like the US that tend to allow more freedom of expression can't even handle it. Every time I turn arround someone wants to sue an mp3 site, censor in the name of stopping porn, jerk away peoples domain names without due process, restrict the export of encryption, and force people to remove DVD code from their web sites.
Yes I think it is safe to say, the US of A definitely can not handle what's going on - and if anything goes down - it will go down here first. In fact, it is almost frightening, because many large corporations have bet over a trillion dollars on the assumption that copyrights are a basic right, they're not, they're not sustainable, and they're not enforcable. It's only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose.
David