[Newspoetry] Response to Feedback on Previous Article

[Wendy Edwards]

Below is my response to someone who said that the implication that expanding
the access to the Internet was commercially-driven.  I'd welcome feedback.
(W)
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To respond, I didn't mean to suggest that the desire to bring technology to
developing countries was motivated only (or even mainly) by commercialism.
(However, U.S. involvement in other countries is often exploitive, if anyone
followed the reasons that people were protesting the World Trade
Organization and the International Monetary Fund.)  It seems like there are
many divides in the world, for example, housing, health, basic needs, and
safety, and Internet access is only one of them.  Despite being a CS student
and professional, I'm concerned about the perception that the technology,
particularly the Internet, will solve almost all our problems because it
seems to trivialize other real problems.  What bothered me the most during
the talk was not cynicism about the motives of the people who were
interested in expanding the Internet to other parts of the world; they may
be truly altruistic and noble.  However, sometimes making places "wired"
seems like a putting a small, pretty band-aid on a gaping wound.  In the
U.S., we see slick photos of politicians helping to connect classrooms to
the Internet, and at the same time they're self-righteously cutting public
aid to mothers with dependent children.  So I didn't think that people's
motives in expanding access were exploitive or dishonest, but it bothered me
that we could run a few connections into a country, give them some old
computer equipment, and then congratulate ourselves on how much we've
improved their lives.  We can avoid contemplating their real problems this
way -- we don't have to think about how many people in Southern Africa are
dying of AIDS; instead, we just give them some software, e-mail, whatever,
and think, "The U.S. saved the day again."  Maybe this is also unreasonable;
I realize that we are often limited to what we can do, and in this case,
maybe that just means providing computer technology, even if it fails to do
anything about the most pressing problems of the people we're trying to
help.