Mom's post:
Information Technology and Third World
Countries
In none of the developing countries where I work is it true that only the rich and/or educated have access to internet and e-mail. It may be true that for people of middle and old age, only the rich and/or educated have access, but not for the younger people, at least in urban areas, but in many fairly isolated rural areas as well. Wherever there are computers being used at work, or in universities or schools, there are gangs of teenagers and young adults at those computers after office hours, teaching each other to use the technology and communicating with the world. Someone who is officially there has to be present to unlock the door, but most of these people are not connected with the workplaces where the computers are, just dropping in to visit.
There are many cases of people clubbing up to buy a shared computer and pay for access too, or sharing the cost of sessions at urban cybercafes, which are popping up everywhere around the world. And once there are a few computers in offices, suddenly people who know how to use them begin to give training to others on a moonlighting basis -even in tiny villages. And, of course, the fact is that those who do not use computers are already marginalised in the United States, and also that the counties which pay less taxes and therefore have fewer or no computers in the school, are not giving their children an even break. Do we suggest taking computers out of the primary schools of America?
And we must not overestimate our potency - it is not within our power to marginalise or not third world countries. They are already marginalised by poverty, lack of access to many resources, often very bad government, and so on. In any event, one of the hardest things about living in many third world countries is the lack of access to accurate information on what is going on around the world, a state of affairs which has enormous political implications domestically.
One simply has to take a look at any of the Sudan discussion groups, which are participated in by people in and out of Sudan, to see how much this access contributes to [an] understanding of what is actually going on. Or Iran, for that matter, or Egypt, or many other places.
And, in fact, we pour money into these countries for the most incredible projects, often with no demand for such activities at all, but here is an area in which there is a very high level of demand, and in fact computers and internet don't cost much relative to these [other] things.
Perhaps what we should be doing rather than arguing against email and internet in the third world is to work to increase the relevance of what is on the internet to the needs of people working for constructive change within third world countries. It is extraordinarily difficult in most third world countries to know what is going on in one's field elsewhere, and the internet is still very far from sup-porting change in this area. Much more can be done to report to colleagues everywhere things such as what projects were tried, with what inputs, toward what ends, with what results, with what lessons learned, for instance. What is on now has a distinctly commercial flavor, alas, and we would do much better to be more analytic and more collegial.
In sum, I think trying, even unconsciously, to limit the information available to people is not a good recipe for development, nor for growing autonomy, nor anything. I do wish the internet had more to offer.
Linda Oldham
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