Tech gap separates nations

AP ^ | June 18, 2004

[sarcasm]

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — The technology gap between poor and rich countries remains a major barrier to easing world poverty, delegates said Thursday as a weeklong U.N. trade and development forum wound toward its end.

"Even the academic literature on information technology suggests that it is only applicable to industrially developed countries," said President-elect Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic, who takes office Aug. 16. "We have to change that."

"The name of the game is access, access, access," Juan Carlos Solines, director of Ecuador's digital government project, told delegates at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Funding is the biggest problem, Solines said. Governments can't pay for technology infrastructure improvements when they are already struggling to fix crumbling roads and bridges and to provide programs to feed the hungry and vaccinate children.

Governments and aid groups must work more closely to channel more money to projects aimed at boosting technology in poor countries, delegates said. Without technology advances in developing countries, rich countries will continue their domination of world trade.

"No one must be left behind. Every community must be included, even the most remote Amazon village," Solines said.

However, some say many countries, particularly in Africa, are so far behind that providing them with computers doesn't make sense.

Those countries need the basics: Electrical power, steady sources of water and rudimentary technology to improve their farming production. Even if Internet access is provided to remote African areas, illiteracy is a huge problem, and there is often little useful content in local languages.

"There is too much focus on technology transfer that often is north-south," said Andrew Scott, programs and policies director of the Intermediate Technology Development Group.

The British-based charity helps farming communities in Kenya make mini-electrical power stations by teaching villagers how to harness streams with turbines and generators so they have electricity.

Sudanese farmers are taught how to make plows from scrap metal, replacing the primitive hoes they traditionally use to plant crops.

"What people in low-income communities need is the development of their own technology," Scott said.

The U.N. conference in São Paulo brought together leaders of mainly Latin American countries, plus trade ministers from around the world. It ends today.

[LS]

Governments DON'T "pay for technological infrastructure." Companies and individuals do. Netscape was not invented by Al Gore, but by Marc Andreasson. The PC was not invented by government, but by Jobs and Wozniak. A working computer language was not invented by government but by Bill Gates. "Well, they had to have phone lines?" Er, phone lines were virtually invented by Bell and his network, later expanded by Alexander Vail. "Well, they don't have cable?" Call TimeWarner. These countries need to realize that what they lack is not more aid, but more entrepreneurs.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

It is also much cheaper to incorporate ideas developed elsewhere into a functioning society than it is to create them originally. If we just allow our technology to be sold we have done more for the third world citizens than most of their governments do. If the governments provide some security and the rule of law their people can do the rest. It is much easier to catch up by copying success than it is to lead the way.

[LS]

"It is easier to catch up by copying success than it is to lead the way." Catch up, true, but as Japan showed, one cannot ever take the lead merely by "copying."

Even if we export most of our ideas, the fact that we have the functioning "hives" of activity where ideas are cross-pollinated generates still more new technology. Economists have a term for this---I call it "vicinities" effects, but I know that's technically not correct.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

I agree

The exchange of ideas is the key to innovation. The Roman Roads provided for an efficient means to exchange ideas, as they said at the time all roads lead to Rome. Today the INTERNET with America at its heart provides that exchange of ideas at a much quicker pace.