Universal Access… More from the Riptari Filter

riptari filter: Facing Kenny's Figure

What we really ought to be doing, all of us who are taking an interest in the internet's expansion, is not only to follow Mr. Kelly's example by continuing to openly, frequently criticize the call for universal access, but more importantly we should start creating and implementing new and realistic methods to bring the internet's benefits to isolated areas.

Instead of focusing on what is (at least in our life-times) likely to be an absurd ideal (in the 'world peace', 'no starvation' mold), there must be a better focus for our efforts in working with ICTs for development.

I have a suggestion. Let's have a look at commercial business-models, entrepreneurship and grassroots innovation. On the one hand I believe the argument made sometimes that the free market will eventually bring the technology into every corner of the world. On the other hand, I can see it isn't happening at the moment.

People like David Boaz at the Cato Institute, make some very good points about the so-called Digital Divide. He especially focuses on the internal US divide, between the poor and the rich, the black and the white, and basically claims that the free market will correct these divergences given time.

There are a few points worth making here. First of all, David Boaz and others spend a lot of time talking about the internal US digital divide. I know very little about this particular issue, and frankly, being Danish, am not all too concerned about it. What does concern me is the global inequalities, in financial, educational, medical and yes technical areas. This divide is a whole different ballgame than anything internal to the US. It is more severe, less is being done (effectively) on a daily basis to correct it, and it concerns aabout 20 times as many people as the entire population of the US. Oh, and let's not forget that the free markets are failing miserably to deal with it (i'm not even going to try and prove the validity of this statement, but believe me, failed they have).

I clearly remember my economics teacher in the last vague memories of some long forgotten education, impressing upon us how free markets depend on free flow of information, and also hinting more than once that there were conceivable situations in international economics where toll- and customs barriers would hinder the optimal workings of the free market.

And that, IMHO, is exactly the situation we have today. Yes, the free market could and should bring communication technologies to the masses given a reasonable amount of time. Unfortunately, for various reasons, this is not happening. The reasons are diverse and heavily interconnected, but some of the obvious ones include:

• The agricultural policies of Europe and the US limit the ability of many developing nations to sell agricultural goods at a reasonable price, and thus limit the avialbility of foreign currencies in these markets.
• The standard stock-market model of corporate ownership does not make for sober evaluations of investments. The risk of investing in the developing world is often overstated, causing private companies to abandon potentially profitable investments in the developing world in favour of less risky (conceived or real) investments.
• The above point in turn means that technology companies are not willing to consider many developing nations as potential markets, and therefore do not concern themselves with building systems that solve problems intrinsic to these nations. Instead they are satisfied with developing smaller, faster, cheaper technology for the same 5% of the world population who already have it.
• The Keynesian approach of a free market supported by a strong government with social responsibilities may take care of some of the inequality inside many European countries, but when it comes to globalisation there is a severe lack of involvement. In other words the effort we spend on International development does not even begin to approach what is necessary to make an impact.
• Corruption, corruption, political instability and all the other ails of new democracies. It is difficult, and discouraging to work against deep-grained corruption and power-struggles caused, IMO, by lack of maturity as democratic systems.

So back to Peter Thomas, and his challenge to come up with a better focus. Well, here's one I have come to believe is possible and even worthwhile. How can we overcome the failings of the market-driven economies in dealing with these disparities?

Well, some of these failures have rather obvious solutions yelling at us.
Could we replace some of the lack of free market investment capital with some of the billions of dollars spent yearly on development work?
Could we encourage entrepreneurship and grassroots innovation in the developing world, to overcome the lack of focus of western companies in developing products for these countries?
Could we perhaps try to turn some of the brilliant minds in academia, civil society (Open Source movement included) and private business towards cooperating with their partners abroad in solving some of the IT challenges that exist in the developing world?
Others, especially in dealing with policy, corruption and democracy are much more difficult, and probably come down to how to get a 30-year (or younger) democracy to the state of maturity of an established European democracy in less than 70 years.

This is what i believe in. That a concerted effort at attacking some of the failings of the free market might just overcome some of those failings and allow asituation to occur where the markets indeed do the right thing, and start minimizing inequalities instead of increasing them.
Am I a insufferable fool, idealist and optimist?