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UN Secretary-General Asks for Help
knownsense writes "News.com.com is carrying a feature by Kofi Annan talking of the digital divide. He says, "But bridging the digital divide is not going to be easy. Too often, state monopolies charge exorbitant prices for the use of bandwidth." and of bringing WiFi to the developing world. This at a time when places like Panama ban cheaper means of communication and places like India instead of combating absolute illiteracy and hunger, run out to make PDAs. Is the digital divide a purely western concept?"
I'm not convinced this can be solved from outside or that all cultures want it solved. This kind of transformation needs to start from within. Indiais a great example of a country with excellent educational expertise and literacy, but they lack the educational infrastructure to deliver it to everyone. Compounding this their culture is not geared towards allowing all childern to spend their time learning. Many children in India and other cultures are breadwinners.
Bootstsapping industries in these countries also requires profound cultural change that is often rejected.
The "Digital Divide" is nothing but a fear of change. Governments need to realize that moving with the times is not a bad thing.
We hear of a "Digital Divide", but never a "Health Halving" or a "Food Fjord" or a "Freedom Fission". "Digital Divide" seems to be just a handy buzz term to throw around when you are a technologist and have no real ideas that address a country's true problems...
It is so difficult to form any type of organization aimed at bridging the digital divide. Here in the US the PowerUp program just died. If a program like that can't survive in one well-developed country, how can something similar take on the world's technology deficiencies?
From the article: "Though it failed to eliminate the divide, the program--established in 1999--did succeed in equipping nearly 1,000 high-tech computer labs in underserved areas across the country before pulling the plug."
You never hear people talking about the Ferrari divide, the posh house with swimming pool divide or things like that. Yes, it would be great if everyone could benefit from technology, but just at the minute, it's not for everyone. And what's wrong with that?
I know this sounds as a troll and most people expect me to bash the Bush (actually if a small country was chosen by the UNO to monitor every Iraqi transaction, I then guess that some planned invasion would -all of a sudden- become less urgent) but I really think that to the point that you may downvote this electronical impulse of mine to oblivion, this won't change my advice.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
A digital divide is a symptom of a set of much more deep-rooted problems, not a cause. I think diplomats like to pay lip service to the "digital divide" so they can look like they're concerned about the issues at hand when they're really not. After all, having an enormous underclass to put to cheap labor is good for big business.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Funding the "digital divide" is only a subsidy for major telecommunications companies to invade third-world countries and other places to set up their infrastructure for future profit.
Other infrastructure should be set up in poor countries first -- how about drinking water first? Most countries don't have it, and children around the world are drinking filthy water while the UN gives lip service to the "digital divide."
Even in America, the drug and crime problem should be rooted out in poor neighborhoods before we go and give away internet access to those who will never use it.
Think about it: intelligence and education (or a lack thereof) really is a source of problems for a lot of countries.
Digital Divide? No, Education Divide would be more like it.
Just my (un)educated opinion, of course.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
and places like India instead of combating absolute illiteracy and hunger, run out to make PDAs.
Well, the Simputer was in fact built to combat illiteracy! I saw a documentation about it on a German/Austrian/Swiss TV station "3sat" presenting the Simputer, and they basically showed programs to teach people all kinds of stuff. So, IMHO this is a good thing.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
And never give money for free if you want to help someone.
Cancelling a debt will hurt the recipient in the long run: He will get used to getting help for free and develop an addiction.
There are other ways to help: I believe that third world countries should be given lower interest loans, even zero-interest loans ; conditioned by their changing their economies and reducing corruption.
This IT help the UN aparently wants to give poor countries is a step in the right direction.
But relinquishing debt is stupid and eventually hurts the poor more than the rich.
Working for necessity's mother.
For "places like India to combat absolute illiteracy and hunger", they need money.
The best way to make money is to sell the highest-value products and services they can, to those who have it. Hey, it beats begging - and getting "freebies" with strings attached...
Don't blame them for doing their best.
Hopefully this will provide you all with a chance to contribute and help tackle the problems/tasks Kofi Annan stated:
If all countries are to benefit, we need more and better strategic public-private partnerships. That is one of the primary functions of the United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force, which brings together CEOs, government officials, nongovernmental organizations, technical experts and other information industry leaders.
Anan says, "Public tele-centers have been established in places as diverse as Egypt, Kazakhstan and Peru," and that "bridging the digital divide is not going to be easy. Too often, state monopolies charge exorbitant prices for the use of bandwidth. Governments need to do much more to create effective institutions and supportive regulatory frameworks that will attract foreign investment; more generally, they must also review their policies and arrangements to make sure they are not denying their people the opportunities offered by the digital revolution."
I think this whole article misses the point. The problem in countries such as Egypt, Kazakhstan, Peru and other similar places is their lack of truely transparent constitutional democracy and a properly regulated free market, or anything even approaching it. Just look at our previous discussion on Panama. Anan is pushing for treating the symptoms without addressing the root problem.
If you want to solve the digital divide, stop supporting dictatorships and other corrupt third world governments. Of course, I can understand Anan not being able to address the real problem, being that said governments make up about 2/3rd's of the UN's member states.
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
"Compounding this their culture is not geared towards allowing all childern to spend their time learning. Many children in India and other cultures are breadwinners."
Its not the culture mind you. NO where is it decried that you shud have more children as they are bread winners. Its an adapatation according to the circumstances. Its no different from what we do just before the exam. We know that if we dont study now we will flunk. In the same way those people know that if their children dont earn, the whole family will starve. And when one's survival is at stake, ethics dont really matte anymore. And once u do something repeatedly, you stop feeling bad about it.
As far as spending money on PDAs is concerned, the whole aim of the project was to improve the circumstances which force these people to send their children to work, i.e poverty. Its the same logic, you give a man food and he will be hungry the next day, teach him how to grow food and you have given him food for life. And the next logical question will be how will it tackle poverty. Well, majority of Indians depend on agriculture for a living. And this PDA can help them to find out about new techniques, weather patterns (it rains only four months in a year in India hence correct information about the timing of rains is very important) et. Besides it can reach people where the educational infrastructure is not very good and hence help improve the overall quality of life.
What's under yellowstone?
"places like India instead of combating absolute illiteracy and hunger, run out to make PDAs."
And if the PDA's sell well, wealth is created, jobs are created, and illiteracy and hunger are combated. This without the intervention of the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, or any of the other institutions that the whiners of the planet like to condemn. The Evil Social Irresponsible PDA manufacturers pay taxes, which wind up in the coffers of the Indian government, which can then either a) spend it on programms to fight illiteracy and hunger; b) try to subsidize more development leading to job creation, or c) (most likely) squander it.
I forsee a world where computing technology will be considered dangerous to public safety. Since it can be used to invade bank accounts, model nuclear weapons, and copy Hollywood DVD's, all "consumer" computing solutions will be closed end-to-end systems, and only a select few companies will have access to source code and hardware API's.
There will be a debate about whether individuals have a "right" to computing technology, much like the current debate over gun ownership. Of course, gun ownership is largely an urban/rural debate, but instead of simply establishing gun-free zones, the endless argument is about whether guns kill people or people do.
And so it will be with computers. Since computers aren't mentioned anywhere in the US constitution, it will be all the easier for Congress to restrict and regulate consumer hardware sales to just bare-essential, low-performing models.
Ridiculous? Well, in most states, you can't own a howitzer, and if you build a car it better be "street legal." Why do you think you have any more right to a desktop supercomputer?
Already, encryption technologies are export-prohibited, and DRM looms not on the horizon, but in our faces. Currently, you can purchase an Intel chip and write your own operating system, but what happens when those chips are not for sale? It's not like you're going to build your own $20 billion fab.
In my CS curriculum, the idea was broached that "mission critical" programmers should be licensed tradesmen. But will the transition to maturity in the computing field be guided by scientific guilds, or will computing become a secretive, heavily-restricted "military" technology?
The third-world doesn't need computers. They, and all of us, need guaranteed access.
..to power supplies and clean water.
...plus without decent power there wil be nothing to "plug" anything digital into, not to mention little time to learn the device and its usefulness.
Being literate wouldn't hurt either.
In the third world countries that I have been to, the lack of power and fresh water add many hours of work to the day that inhibit things such as going to school, learning new things,
I suppose a combination of a cheap electicity, unrestrictive laws (telephones are cheaper now in Nigeria now that cell phones have replaced Nitel)and an effort to combat the nastier effects of poverty are needed before we all get our old Pentiums ready to ship off.
and places like India instead of combating absolute illiteracy and hunger, run out to make PDAs
India has first to combat poverty, illiteracy, give food for its people, care to fight droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes, make peace with everyone else, and then make PDA's...
However, I wonder how will India will do all this if it can't reach the technological frontier. On what basis will India fight its ills if they tell her not to make PDA's or similar technological achievements (aka not make good real money). That's the Banana Republic philosophy. You make bananas and you should fight your ills. And we keep making rockets, computers, PDA's and nukes. From time to time we send you a taste of our technocratic civilization so that you will not feel so bad with this "divide" between us. But you should stop altogether to make PDA's. Poverty and PDA's are incompatible. Do bananas as we like them while making PDA's.
if i remember correctly for 'information society' classes. Digital divide is considered because of the 'universal access/universal service' idea. Kind of like we have on telephone service in the west (everybody has a phone, companies are not allowed to cut your incoming phonecalls even if you don't pay) The divide would now be that there is no 'universal access' yet so you have two classes of people. Throwing computers at them is just a quick and dirty solution (ok, it worked for phones but 'puters are more complex)
You can't pipe a bowl of rice down a T1 Line. I don't care what kind of bandwidth you have.
Politics is the source of starvation and illiteracy.
There's more than enough food, and bandwidth for every human being on Earth (though maybe not quite enough IP addresses, but that's what subnets and routers are for).
Politics is keeping sacks of corn in a warehouse in Africa, the same corn I ate last night, but some politician told the African not to eat it because of genetic engineering. Though this is a small case compared to the politics of tribal wars in Africa.
Politics is keeping loved ones from communicating with eachother around the world. I have no idea about Asia, though I don't think it's as bad there as in Africa. Pathetic! That's the best word for the politics coming "Out of Africa" (sic)... Pathetic. (not to mention ponderous).
This shifts the balance of power away from the superpowers (unless they have a lot of contries they can force to vote with them).
After the colapse of the east bloc the UN (at that time the west had a majority in the UN so it was a usefull weapon) has lost its usefullness for the US.
If you look around you will notice that the US is withdrawing from a lot of these multinational forums and are instead making deals with other contries one at a time. This way they are in a better position to force their will on other contries. It makes sence if you are the big boy.But the US should be aware though that this is not the way to make freinds in the long run. It has costs...
TCAP-Abort
this is not about left/right as you suggest, this is about humanity and the right to live a decent life
Actually what it's really about is the bad governance and dire civic cultures in the countries on the wrongside of the "divide" permanently keeping these countries in squalor. No amount of tech industry largesse or donate-your-old-computers movements are going to change that.
We've been down this road many, many times before. In past decades the "divide" concerned things like not having enough power plants, multi-lane highways, national airlines, etc. and the West did not fail to pony up huge sums of money for these sorts of projects. What have all these development projects brought their recipients? Most are poorer today than they were then, and this is primarily because they have governed themselves exceptionally poorly.
The sickness of the developing countries is the chronic inability to organize their societies in the necessary ways to make industrialization possible. Once this is cured, then symptoms like the "digital divide" will disappear as a matter of course.
I know this because Tyler knows this.
"Knownsense" is buysy spouting nonsense. This stale old mantra of "don't do anything else, but work on illiteracy/poverty first" is getting pretty tiresome.
Indians know how to combat illiteracy. There are states in India (Kerala) where the literacy rate is 100% (or as close to that as you can get). In other words, the literacy rate of Kerala is higher than Kansas. Checkout this article to read more.
The problem here is that of suburban kids who have barely seen the world trying to "fix" it. Before you suggest any "fixes", spend a few years in a "poor" part of the world and see what the real issues are, and not what CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS tell you they are.
As far as the PDAs in India are concerned, don't you that the designers (i.e. Indians), who are much closer to the targetted consumers than you are, may (just may) have a better idea of the needs of the villagers over there?
>
I wonder if at the time, ARPANET was considered frivolous spending? Do we consider the development of the Drone plane frivolous (the one that killed that Al Qaeda top leader in Yemen a couple days ago).
The problem with this concept of the Digital Divide is that it is too much like providing trucks without also providing things to carry in them. Sure, providing IT infrastructure is a good thing, but it is meaningless without a job for that infrastructure to perform. I agree that the pat answer "focus on food and poverty first" is an oversimplification, but what concerns me more is what value they get out of the IT should they be provided with it.
An example: I gather, and I'm not a doctor, that there are some easy methods of curing dystentry. Nevertheless, people still die from it. This is presumably because they don't have access to information about how to cure it. So, if we provide them with a computer hooked up to the internet, will a small village in Ethiopia suddenly cure the problem? They can, but only if they a) think to look online, b) know how to find it, c) find the information in a format that is useful to them, and d) are able to trust that information. Can they do that at the moment? Possibly, but I doubt they can easily.
And yes, I'm aware that the content will follow the infrastructure. But the question remains - if we want to get information to people, are we better off focusing on high-end IT solutions, such as WiFi, or on low-end solutions, like the provision of pedal-radios with skilled medical advice on the other end? I would be inclined to figure out what kinds of information are required, and look for the simplest and best methods of getting that information to the people who need it, before we start looking at bridging the digital divide.
btw, I am aware of good work currently being conducted (including by people whom I work with) into what role IT can play in developing countries. It isn't as if the IT world is ignorant of this issue. And it is even mentioned in the article. But the tendancy is still to focus on high-end solutions to problems that I believe should (IMHO), at least initially, be handled in a manner that better suits the situation.
Of course, I'm always open to being convinced otherwise.
How about :
"Don't invade countries, steal all their wealth, enslave their citizens, destroy their infrastructure and put in a puppet government otherwise it will become an economic basket case and in a hundred years time you will have to loan them millions of dollars to help them rebuild a basic infrastructure and not become a hotbed of hatred against your country"?
The current world is a result of previous generations empire-building. We should try our best to avoid these mistakes again. A lot of countries are in debt because they were forced into these situations by other countries, usually through military force.
As my friend in Cambodia said to me, it's hard to get excited about IT when you're trying to clear up the landmines that no one else cares about any more. It needs to be part of a bigger solution.
Beating the West (U.S) at the technology race is the only chance the Third-World has to break out of it's economic dependence.
I didn't miss it -- it is a key in the issue. It is only transparent if you look for it and care. There are many attempts to cloud the issue, but one key one, freedom of the press, has been allowed in Kenya for some time.
Everyone in Kenya knows that the president (and the rest of the government) is corrupt. They accept it and live with it. The papers rail about it, but not much happens.
The information is available (US and Kenya) if you look for it. Accessibility of information is what the digital divide is about.
You still have to desire to have that information. That is a sociological problem.
Or, going back to basics: You can not solve a sociological problem with technology. (Whose law is that?)
However, I believe there is a corallary: Availability of technology can be a great asset in bringing about sociological change.
Michael
Government should restrict itself to tackling the problems that can't be handled by other means. National defense is one such problem because it is shared equally by all citizens and the incremental cost is insupportably high to be borne by cities or states. Defense spending "excesses" serve to keep the crazy bastards of the world at bay. That there are crazy bastards in the world who need to be kept at bay is historical fact. Turn the other way or play the appeasement game, a la WW II, and you get to spend millions of lives cleaning up the mess. Homelessness, hunger, youth without hope, etc, are all problems which can and should be solved at the local level from an entirely different pot of money. *YOU* personally, can go out on the street and help with regards to homelessness, hunger, and youth problems. Volunteer. You can't take up a collection at work to buy an ICBM or a long range bomber.
It's time to stop pointing fingers and blaming government for not creating an ideal world. First, that's your job. Second, their version of an ideal world is probably not what you have in mind.
I think it is time for all world leaders to take a crash course in the basics. Someone needs to drill Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs into their heads. Take care of the IMPORTANT things first - First, food, potable water, and clean air. Second, shelter, personal safety and security. When those things are addressed, not only will the world be a MUCH better place, the other things will be easier to address as well. I for one am sick of hearing about a "digital divide" when people are starving and still being victimized by crime.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
But, eventually something will happen. With transparency and democracy, people know they're getting screwed, and while they might "live with it" for a certain amount of time, someone will eventually say "why should I let myself get screwed?" And they'll orginize other people who will get politically active and elect someone who will change things.
Transparency will cause people to care, because no one likes getting screwed. It may take decades for it to happen, but eventually it will happen.
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
The primitive mindset of the bourgeois is solely based on greed, selfishness and rejection of whatever is different, and therefore not conductive to social progress.
Problem solving should never be sequential. India can't wait to have hunger/illiteracy problems solved first and then go into high tech stuff. If country has to develop, it has to progress on all fronts.
Koffi Annan can't actually do anything to fix anything. So let's invent a new problem and make it someone else's to fix.
Great points. You must be a Libertarian with a librarian's knowledge.
I'm serious! Cybercafes are sprouting up in Lagos and other African cities, and guess who one of their main customer bases is? Yes, the African money transfer scammers.
THe free market at work, I guess.
The Web was developed during the early nineties, at the time we had 286 processors just going in to the 386 world. So all that's needed to surf the World Wide Web (as a knowledge base) is a 286 with a dial-up connection and a web browser.
This will still get you IRC and email, and perhaps some access to news, etc in lynx. But yeah, no flash sites for these guys. I did OK on the local text-based internet with a 386/33 (I think, I may have had a 486 by then) and a 2400 baud modem.
It's a good forward step though, it's good to keep in mind that in many cases "anything is better than nothing"
Go figure.
What do you suggest they do then? Vote for the right leader? Who controls the way elections are run? Is it not the same people you want them to get rid of.
Who controls the media that brainwashes the less literate into believing what the rulling party says? Hah Freedom of press? Its a mockery of the real situation. Just because there are elections don't mean there is democracy.
While I agree with you on most of your points. I think the key issue is control. The current leaders have control over every aspect of the lives of the people -- there is no system to check what they do so they don't have to do what the people want. They aren't even afraid of elections because they control it anyway.
In Cameroon for example, rulling party lost the presidential elections in 1992 but they changed the rules overnight and cancelled most of the results that did not favor them, decalred a state of emergency and deployed the millitary (whose generals are close friends of the head of state and whose members have exhorbitant salaries) at every street corner.
The opposition protested and the case went to the supreme court ( whose members are all appointed by the head-of-state from the rulling party) and the case was thrown out. One presidential election later, he is still in power and the constitution has been changed to extend is term of office. People have lost interest in the election process because it doesn't change a thing. The is the same situation in many african countries with so-called 'democracies'.
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
That war ravaged, backward, feudal society called Japan did?
One of the best things somebody could have done for the world economy was to go to VSNL and ask them how much money it would take to get them to go away and leave everybody alone. It doesn't matter how big a number they say - a billion dollars? Pay them.
There was a report on US National Public Radio yesterday about the call center business in Bangalore, which started essentially from scratch two years ago, and is expected to make about $25 Billion over the next five years. Nobody actually offered to pay VSNL a billion-dollar bribe (as far as I know
They're not the only place with telecom monopolies maintaining the digital divide. Most countries have monopolies on radio broadcasting as well, and the combination of radio and telephone monopolies delayed the development of effective radio-based voice calling technology in the US by 40-50 years, and there are large parts of the world that have limited or expensive telephony because they're limited to wires. (Remember that the digital divide is partly about computing, but it's partly a voice communications divide as well.) Technologies like unlicensed 802.11 are just gradually leaking around it, and most practical VOIP was initially a better replacement for ham-radio phone-patch that was good enough for calling your cousin in Israel even if it wasn't good enough for business calls.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Democracy doesn't mean free markets - it means the people picking the politicians who run their governments, and ideally means that the people can tell the politicians what laws to make. That doesn't mean that you won't get bad laws - protectionism is really popular in much of the world, especially in countries with farmers or big industries. India's a democracy, but it's got heavily non-free markets. Australia's Telstra is no longer a total monopoly, and they don't have endemic corruption problems, but they're still technically clueless.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Libertarian, probably. Librarian's knowledge, doubt it. He doesn't seem to be aware that fighting things like Homelessness, hunger, youth without hope, etc. have been considered part of the responsibility of states since the days when there was a grain subsidy in democratic Athens.
Ultimately in a state with an unregulated economy there will be a tendency for the economically strong to victimize the economically weak, as in a state without a system of justic there will be a tendency for the physically strong to victimize the physically weak (philosophical justifications for "might makes right" date back to the Chinese Legalists and the more abhorrent of the Greek Sophists). The purpose of a state is to provide an organizational framework for the weak many to fight back against the strong few, whether it is a tribe fighting hyenas in the paleolithic savannas, the swordless peasants fighting the well-heeled, and well-armed, nobility in 18th-century France or medieval China, a union fighting a robber baron in 19th century England or America, or a superpower fighting a BW-toting lunatic in the No-Fly Zone in the 21st century. The "power" that the state is meant to fight may manifest itself as military strength or economic dominance. The libertarian would divorce these kinds of power from one another, as though economic dominance cannot be used to oppress the weak. This is to forget one's medieval history.
Let's just say I aspire to maintain an awareness that the stuff I don't know outweighs that which I do.
My position is that minimizing the power we all seem to be so concerned with waving over each other is a good thing. Certainly economically powerful (short for the vilified rich, right?) can take advantage of the poor. The high risk lending industry is a good example. Similarly the politically powerful can victimize the politically weak. Political power in a one person, one vote system comes in numbers. There's lots of poor people and not that many rich ones, consequently we now have a tax code where economically weak, politically powerful people don't pay much in taxes and are still pandered to by politicians who say tax cuts should be targeted at the poor. I say this as someone who has been there, and believe me, you could have cut my taxes by 50% and it wouldn't have made much difference. Half of not much is still not much. More than either I'd worry about governmental power. The Money Store may tell me I have to pay 25% interest rates or whatever they charge, but I don't think they're going to herd me into showers that never get wet or work me to death (literally) in pursuit of an agrarian utopia which will never come. Similarly the Republicrats and the Demicans (can you tell the difference? It's getting harder) may cause my tax burden to increase at a much faster rate than my income, but they probably aren't going to herd me and everyone who looks kind of like me out of the country, shooting those who protest.
I think what I want is relatively simple. Personal responsibility. You're responsible for providing for your own needs. If you can't, get voluntary help from the nearest possible source, family and community first. Coercion should be avoided. When the government absolutely must be involved, use that force, which is what it is, at a point as local to the problem as possible, and in as small an increment as possible. Today's good intentions become tomorrow's governmental powers. The ostensibly good intentioned people creating those powers today won't be there when their successors misuse them in the years to come. Sadly what seems to happen is that rather than banding together to solve problems, we get special interest groups running to get government to "solve" their problems, that being a euphamism for complicate current problems with brand new ones.
You'll have to judge for yourself whether this makes me a libertarian. Some of what they have to say has merit. Some is a bit...idealistic. Like the rest of us, they want to believe the world is simpler than it really is.