Chapter One of Overselling the Web? looks at some predictions regarding the impact of the Internet on development. George Gilder chose December 31st, 1999 most suitably to suggest the change might be millenarian:
With any technology that will change the world so radically as the Internet… religious wars are important and inescapable….The twentieth century has been an era when an atheistic belief in the ultimacy of matter and the triviality of man led to the horrors of Nazism, Communism, and an epoch of total war. Now sweeping through the global economy, the overthrow of matter will unleash an undertow of religious belief that will make the new millennium a time of awakening to the oceanic grandeur and goodness of the universe…
Thomas Friedman hasn’t gone quite as far, but he, too, has been pretty optimistic: “We are now in a period of radical change, possibly more sweeping and complex than any period since 1776-1789.” Technology, he argues, “is shrinking the world from a size medium to a size small.” At the same time, it “turns out that the real secret of success in the information age is what it always was: fundamentals — reading, writing and arithmetic, church, synagogue and mosque, the rule of law and good governance.” Indeed, these basics have got even more important. “Just when the developing world is coming to really grasp that it has no choice but to get itself ready to climb aboard this train… the train is going to get faster — not slower — as the developing world moves toward Internet-based commerce, communication and learning systems. What’s worse, no one can slow the train down, because the world economy today is just like that Internet: everybody is connected but nobody is in charge.”
The potential of the Internet as a force for development was the focus of a G-8 meeting as well as a UN Summit (in two parts). It has catalyzed aid programs and any number of "e-readiness assessments." All of this activity is based on what might be termed the "Okinawa Consensus":
The Internet and related technologies present a significant opportunity for developing countries to improve their growth prospects. Indeed, the Internet may be a ‘leapfrog’ technology –one that creates an opportunity for developing countries to catch up economically with the industrial world. The technology is a powerful tool to improve government service delivery, education, and income-earning opportunities even for the world’s poorest people. Given that, poor country governments (in partnership with the private sector and with the help of donors) need to dedicate significant resources to expanding the use of the Internet, especially in government and education and especially to reach the poor. There is also a role to promote Internet industries through technology parks, and Internet use through public access programs such as putting computers in libraries and building stand-alone Internet access points.
Overselling the Web? is about the policies suggested, the rationale behind them, and which ones might make sense.
Charles Kenny 