BOLD 2003: Development and the Internet

There’s a group of countries and peoples—it’s that one percent elite, it’s the people sitting in a Harvard Law School classroom able to talk about it—that are more or less near the top of the mountain, which is where we’re trying to get everyone else—c’mon and join us. That carries with it an innate premise that what we’ve got, you want, and we’re here to help export it to you, so that you have the rule of law in your country and you have reliable systems, and [so] that your corruption is our corruption—which isn’t that bad, right? I mean, we know what our corruption is, so, yeah, our senators aren’t the best sometimes, but it’s a system that more or less works, and shouldn’t it be yours too? And, of course, that’s what Diane is talking about when she talks about the impulse to want to put under international treaty so much of the stuff, and when she says how hard it is when the rules vary so much from one country to another, it’s so hard to do business and get things done and just cut and paste the technologies and the other expertise that we think could help so much.

And then of course in the other direction are exactly what we were seeing from, say, Charlie and Becca and Wayne, which is: No, different countries have different comparative advantages, if you want to put it into an economic vernacular, but just different ways of doing things and the whole idea is to respect that. That’s what you keep hearing from Geoffrey and others saying, “No, you go in and you say, ‘How can we help? What do you need,’ not, ‘We’re here to sell you the regular bill of goods.’”

I had a friend once who worked for a company that still exists, so I won’t name it, and he was describing to someone with whom he wanted to become romantically involved what he did for a living, and so he sort of, you know, inflated himself and said, “Well, I work for a company that goes into the Third World, and we offer them various software solutions to help them on their path….” And she interrupted him, and said, “I see, you sell vaporware to poor countries.” And he was like, “well, yes.” A very pithy summary of what, at least it appeared to her, his company was doing.

So I guess the key lies in somehow resolving, and even figuring out, what are our own intuitions are about and what exactly it is we think we’re trying to export out. Why we think we’re in the position to help and they’re in the position to be helped, versus a more even playing field where it’s about giving those who are disempowered voice and power and influence and an opportunity to have the freedom with these digital tools to develop however they want to. And somehow in balancing those impulses lie a lot of the answers to what should be left to international treaty and how flexible it should be; how the developed countries can be helping the developing ones; and, I guess, how much of it really rests of individuals—people of good heart and conscience going in and being able to prove to other individuals that they really are there to help and hope they can get enough like-minded people—or like-spirited people—together to make it...