Is the Internet a form of electronic apartheid?

What are we doing about this situation? Why is it that so few are even discussing the issue? For too many in North America it is just ‘natural’ that everybody else should communicate in English, no one bothers about considering the implications. Globalisation at its best: ‘It’s here, so we can’t do nothing about it’. How convenient!

Is it fair that everybody in the rest of the world has to learn English in order to be part of the ‘electronic democracy’? We have seen organizations in developing countries spend time and energy ‘translating’ web contents into local languages in the hope that the Internet will eventually help people to feel that they are part of modern society. We have seen computers and Internet connections pushed into rural areas where drinking water is not even available, in the name of an ill defined ‘right to knowledge’ - as if knowledge was a privilege of industrialized societies graciously given to the ‘poor’ via new ‘access’ technologies.

The large majority of people in countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America do not read or speak English. At 90% usage, English might be the main language of the Internet, but it is far from being the main mother tongue in our diverse world. It is too easy to say, for example, ‘They speak English in India, don’t they?’ Sure, go and check. Not even cabdrivers in Delhi manage well with English, let alone the billion that have no contact with the few million English-speaking Indian citizens. The same goes for African countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and others. In the ‘English speaking countries’ and former British colonies the majority of the population do not speak let alone read and write English.

Mandarin Chinese and Spanish are larger than English in the real world. ‘Ethnologue’ lists 6,500 living languages in the world. Mandarin comes first with 885 million speakers, Spanish is second with 332 million speakers and English is third with 322 millions speakers. You would not know this from the Internet. Though idealized as a world-wide communication tool, up to now the Internet mainly serves those that speak English. But English is just one aspect of the problem. The Internet is currently promoted as a tool for development, which it isn’t on any relevant scale, at least not in developing countries. There have been conferences and much talk about ‘rural telecommunications’ and too many computers are parachuted into rural areas of Sri Lanka, Mali or Guatemala. Who will use them? Who will benefit from this patronizing trend? Do people really desire to have access to the Internet, when they have no access to telephones, electricity or safe water? Isn’t it an enormous contradiction?

Of course it is, but some international travellers feel so good when they arrive in the most isolated village of Uganda or the Philippines with a laptop under their arm, just to show the magic box in action - as the Spaniards used shiny mirrors to subdue the Incas or the Aztecs during the Conquest of America.

Mixed reactions

When I first coined the term ‘electronic apartheid’ and launched it on the Internet while participating in a web-based debate, the reactions were interesting. Someone argued that English was the ‘fluid’ that really made the Internet possible. I guess he was referring to the ‘right blood’ needed to make the system function. Other participants reacted defensively: ‘We are the ones giving out to the world this incredible technology, so take it or leave it’. In other words, everyone has to catch up or be left out. Somehow it reminded me of those cultures where weak and sick babies were thrown into the sea in order to spare society the burden of taking care of them.

A few reactions were condescending: ‘Do not worry; we will get to your problem soon. In the future there will be software that will automatically translate web contents into other languages’. Sure, we have some already and they are getting better, but a technical solution does not annul the cultural problem.

Finally I read some optimistic reactions: ‘Cultures will survive because they have strong human values, no matter how wide the penetration of the US-loaded Internet’. Well, maybe not. The truth is that many cultures have already disappeared or are disappearing before our very eyes. Not that the Internet is to blame; actually it is not that powerful yet and has not expanded that much among traditional cultures. But cultures are suffering from other uneven interactions in the cultural arena. Radio, television, music and above all consumer products and the advertising that comes with them are preparing societies and cultures as fertile ground for commercial expansion.

Anyone that has worked in developing countries has seen things change in recent years and the trend is only more powerful now that globalisation is the flavour of the month. The more optimistic prospect for many cultures is to become enclaves for tourists, protected cultural areas preserved in a glass box, with no oxygen, as happened in the USA with many of the original nations or ‘tribes’.

Of course, it is worrying that in countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, we are not talking only about tribes but cultures that involve the majority of the population. History has taught us that it is healthy for cultures to mix and evolve through interaction. No great culture has remained a ‘pure’ culture. The most important societies have borrowed and have shared; cultural interactions are responsible for some of the highlights in the advancement of humanity. But the electronic age has made the term ‘cultural exchange’ far too unbalanced, as uneven as those that characterise today’s commercial exchanges.

The rules of the game are dictated unilaterally. Cultures already weakened and divided (nowadays too often by ubiquitous religious denominations and sects) are easily wiped out by the tidal waves of the open market. The vision of a world where everyone will have ‘access’ to the same hamburgers or the same bottled black water is actually very frightening, but that is certainly the trend. The paradox is that capitalism doesn’t need to behave like imperialism: everybody else is doing its dirty work, including academics, scientists, media people and myself by making the effort to write this piece in English. I am playing the game.

The current progress in Internet technology and usage does not really represent any effort to provide room for other cultural expressions. It is not just the problem of language; when we say ‘language’ we are referring to the whole culture behind it. Software that mechanically translates from English to Chinese or the other way around cannot yet deal with that.

A balance in cultural representation

To be honest, we should not yet talk about the Internet ‘building democracy’ or ‘expanding the borders of knowledge’ until the expansion happens not only in terms of technology, but also in terms of relevant content and balanced cultural representation. The technological revolution has blinded many, both in the industrialized nations and in developing countries. The fascination of easy access to the rest of the world has obscured the question of who has access and what are the benefits and risks. One of the illusions of the Internet is that it has no central management. Actually it has; just look at the contents. Money rules.

What is actually happening today with the Internet, happened previously with cable and satellite television. Years ago some thought that satellite and cable TV would bring a better choice of programmes and more diversity of information to the world. Today we know it only helped to impose one point of view, one way of life, one way of looking at society and reality - 24 hours a day! The same big corporations that regulate the lives of most people in industrialized countries have captured the Internet. We all have to navigate through the most incredible labyrinths to get to some oasis that is really worthwhile.

I am aware of the potential of the Internet, as I am one of those privileged people in the world that: 1. Have electricity; 2. Have a phone line; 3. Have a computer; 4. Have enough to pay for the Internet; and 5. Read and write English (painfully sometimes). But I don’t want just any kind of Internet, and that is precisely what we have now, any kind with no quality. The same for television, quantity reigns over quality.

Content instead of garbage

The ideal of a world-wide democratic society where all voices and all cultural differences are equally respected and cherished is obviously not shared by those who are too comfortably installed in a world dominated by a few. Democracy in real life or in cyberspace is not something that comes automatically just because the technology has improved or the right time has come. For a better world or a better Internet many will have to struggle.

Maybe communities in the Third World and consumer associations in the industrialized countries will eventually, hopefully, organize themselves to stop the development of Internet as an instrument of commerce and advertising. It is so normal right now to have a screen full of ads and business offers that nobody seems to realize how horrible it would be to see, for example, all those banners and links surrounding an exhibit of Boticelli in Florence or saturating a film by Buñuel.

Why are we so complacent about taking so much electronic garbage at once? What is the limit? The word ‘free’ in English has unfortunately been corrupted and the Internet is projecting it to world-wide dimensions: ‘fat free’ food, ‘free gift if you click here’, ‘free access’. As if the word had been created by merchants.

How much better it would be to use the word free for freedom. Freedom to take advantage of the Internet, the real liberty to choose the contents and the usage, instead of just following the millions of clones (Internet ‘Dollys’), that are clicking on the same icons, directed to the same search engines, the same sites, the same pages, as if genetically pre-programmed.

How beautiful it would be, for example, to have an ‘Eighth Art’ evolving from the Internet, something so new and innovative and culturally adaptable that it could repeat the extraordinary feat of the other seven arts and help humanity to leap forward. Nobody denies that the Internet is a great advance and that it has enormous potential. But this is the time to make it work for the whole world and not just be the spear-tip of globalisation.

The question of this ‘electronic apartheid’ has to be taken into consideration with open minds and less arrogant attitudes. The issue here is not only how to be successful at selling technology to the Third World - business as usual. The challenge is to shape the Internet into a tool for democracy and development, for participation and cultural identity.

Alfonso Gumucio Dagron is a development communication specialist with experience in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. He worked seven years with UNICEF in Nigeria and Haiti, and as an international consultant for FAO, UNDP, UNESCO and other United Nations agencies. His major country experience also includes Burkina Faso, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Guatemala and Bolivia, his home country. He is the author of various studies on communication, and has also published several books of his poetry and narrative. His short essays and articles have been printed by over a hundred publications, mainly in Latin America. As a filmmaker he directed documentaries on cultural and social issues. Since 1997 he has been part of The Rockefeller Foundation discussion group on ‘Communication for Social Change’. The author can be reached at: agumucio@guate.net