Digital technology and the global economy

The gestation of the Internet took place in military and private labs and at university research centers, from the height of World War II to the last decade of the 20th century. In the early 1990s, spurred by the burgeoning microcomputer marketplace, it entered the commercial domain. Ever since, digital communications and information networks have turned the world into a global village. Spanning the planet, they have revolutionized the workplace and changed lifestyles. And the phenomenal explosion of the Word Wide Web has sealed the interdependence between digital networking and the global economy. Hence, local and world events (trade agreements, financial transactions, natural disasters, sociopolitical conflicts, technological inventions, cultural events, sports venues, etc.) are tracked as they happen around the globe.
Today, technological innovation and increasing bandwidth have pushed mobile devices ahead of desktop computers as business and consumer products. Yet, inequities persist in the form of the digital divide between urban and rural areas in industrial countries, on one hand, and between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, on the other.
The Internet bubble burst of 2000 and the ongoing financial crisis have exposed further the gap between the information have and the information disenfranchised.
In response, various initiatives are afoot. They all seek, arguably, to alleviate and correct such disparities.

Hence, worldwide, the International Telecommunications Union Telecom World Summit (October, 24-27, 2011) focused on reducing the broadband gap as a means of reaching the Millenium Development Goals. It has set 2015 as target date for connecting half of the world’s low-income individuals and 15% of the citizens of the Least Developed Countries. The ITU has access to billions of dollars of unused Universal Service Funds, the organization’s objective. However, its objective remains a tall order, given the lack of commitment to digital infrastructure development at the national level in the Southern Hemisphere, which is compounded by the absence of digital content development policies in those countries.

In the United States, both the private industry and the Federal Government are working on a Web 2.0 strategies. Thus, speaking at the San Francisco Web 2.0 conference (October 18-20, 2011), Mary Meeker, the “Queen of the Internet”, warned that the US digital industry faces real hurdles from the country’s economic environment. A savvy venture capitalist, herself, she made dire predictions about the economy, in general, and digital industries, in particular, given “the U.S. debt crisis, stock market volatility and economic slowdown”. Also, she reminded the audience the vibrant competition building up in Asia and led by such a strong rival as China. Unfortunately her diagnosis is far from consensual, because she lays the culprit on the U.S. Government. Her views stand in contradiction with those of thee “Occupy Wall Street”, which points its fingers on the rich 1%, who enjoy 17% of the nation’s income.
Besides, the Federal Government is no bystander. It funded the ARPA/DARPA efforts which resulted in the deployment of the Internet, in the first place. Secondly, among other things, in December 2010 the White House published a “Report the President and Congress designing a digital future: federally funded research and development in networking and information technology”. Its recommendations emphasize the role of Networking and Information Technology as key driver of economic competitiveness.
Heedful of that undeniable fact, the Digital Public Library of America had its first Plenary meeting in Washington, DC on October 21. Held at the National Archives, it was an all-day event in a packed auditorium, and which I attended courtesy of an invitation from the Berkman Center for Internet Society at Harvard University. Among the initiators of the program are the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Smithsonian Institution, HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive. DPLA is a high-minded project working for the public good. They have signed a partnership agreement with Europeana — the repository of Europe's digital resources from museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections.

What about Africa?

During the gestation of the Internet (1969-1990), and despite the direct involvement of England and France — the two major former colonial powers—, African government had no input whatsoever in the project. No surprise there. However, even when the Web became public in 1992, African countries missed the train by playing the usual technological somnambulism game. Today, despite the official rhetoric and the summits resolutions, communications and information technology lays among the low investment priorities throughout Africa.
It is true that the use of mobile telephony is expanding throughout the continent. Unfortunately, this popular trend cannot hide the lopsided distribution of voice services at the expense of data providers, and, also, the imbalance between wired and wireless networks on the continent.
Last but not the least, the scarce money is spent in speculative operations bound to benefit the domestic “elite” and the foreign brokers.
Take, for instance, Nigeria’s 10 billion US$ sovereign wealth fund, which is reportedly about to be invested on Wall Street, despite the ongoing movement against financial speculations in New York City, London, and elsewhere. Meanwhile, Nigerian institutions (universities, schools, hospitals, libraries, archives) are bandwidth-starved and ill-equipped to carry out their teaching, caring, curating, and research programs. As for my home country of Guinea, entrenched in poverty, it lives outside the Global Network, in a parallel universe. Its dictatorial rulers, past and present, have opted for coercing the populations relentlessly and ruthlessly on a destructive path.

In the end, from their limited and humble beginnings, the TCP/IP Internet and the World Wide Web have morphed into efficient and worldwide technologies. However, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they remain the same. And so far, digital technology has not belied this dictum. If the Internet is to become universal, the Earth's natural, technical and financial wealth ought to be utilized equitably, purposefully and usefully. Otherwise, the Net's brilliant inventions and tangible benefits run the risk of permanently eluding sizable portions of humankind.

Tierno S. Bah