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As Gulf Grows, Some Nations Make High-tech Leap
The gulf between the world's plugged-in and the shut-out is widening, but scores of developing nations are using technology to keep from falling further behind in the global economy, a new report has found.
The Human Development Report 2001 commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) argues that information and communications technology can help overcome barriers of social, economic and geographic isolation.
While Silicon Valley and similar tech centers in Europe and Japan are now legendary, world-class hubs also have emerged in Campinas and Sao Paulo, Brazil, Bangalore, India, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Gauteng, South Africa and El Ghazala, Tunisia.
The 264-page study highlights new options for poor people using the Internet for political empowerment, such as with the global e-mail campaign in January that helped topple Philippine President Joseph Estrada. Other examples include distance learning projects in Thailand and Turkey and job growth created by technology exports from Costa Rica, India and South Africa.
"Often those with the least have the least to fear from the future, and certainly their governments are less encumbered by special interests committed to yesterday's technology," the report said of opportunities developing countries now have. But the report also concludes that most important technology advances bypass the world's poor because of lack of market demand, inadequate public funding and focus of innovative research efforts on high-income consumers.
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