Thursday, August 18, 2005

Technology, the Global South and Skipping Steps: Internet in Rwanda

Donna Haraway describes the cyborg as skipping the Marxist concept of original unity going straight to what lies beyond that. In Rwanda, with out doing the homework, they are doing the same thing. Rwanda is one of the poorest nations in the world and is attempting to become the most wired country in Africa. Most of the people in Rwanda are subsistence farmers but the government wants to insure that it doesn’t get left behind in the technological global world.
Passing by the complications; most Rwandan farmers can’t read, and the roads to get from the farms to the internet café are dirt and covered in pot holes and the schools that are supposed to receive the computers do not have electricity, the Rwandan government plans to get internet access to every part of the country.
Is the global community demanding that countries have internet access to be taken seriously? Is the internet going to be able to help Rwanda leap frog past a torn land of political unrest, grief and killing into a world player? Does this parallel to Castells theory that technology is creating a plane where small organizations can operate on the same level as large ones?

Listen to the news cast from NPR (National Public Radio, USA)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4800031

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