Virtually Left Behind

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

-- Henry Ford

While Henry Ford was talking about the United States in his lifetime, it seems like an appropriate quotation to start this off in the context of the Caribbean. Certainly, the problems may exist in any developing nation to some degree, but I cannot write about all of that. In fact, I cannot write about all of this, but I need to start somewhere. Here's as good a place as any.

Since last week, even before writing 'Globalization and SecondLife', I've been considering aspects of a virtual economy in the context of the real world. And as I've written about often enough, there are severe limitations for people around the world when it comes to participating in a global economy. The first is being able to access the virtual economy through technology - internet access - and while global internet penetration consistently increases, there's the underlying layer which most people ignore within the context of the Digital Divide.

The Technology Illusion

It's as simple as being able to send and receive a dollar across the internet. Some people preach it as eCommerce, more grounded people simply call it commerce. Thomas L. Friedman, in The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization:

Microchip Immune Deficiency Syndrome is the defining political disease of the globalization era.

Fair enough. So the answer for the literal mind is to go out and buy more microchips. This, of course, is right to some degree but as lacking in vision as a person with severe cataracts whose eyes focus on the cataracts themselves. The true definition of Microchip Immune Deficiency Syndrome holds within itself the answer:

MIDS [Microprocessor Immune Deficiency Syndrome]: A disease that can afflict any bloated, overweight, sclerotic system in the post-Cold War era. MIDS is usually contracted by countries and companies that fail to innoculate themselves against changes brought about by the microchip, and the democratizations of technology, finance and information - which created a much faster, more open and more complex marketplace, with a whole new set of efficiencies. The symptoms of MIDS appear when a country or company exhibits a consistent inability to increase productivity, wages, living standards, knowledge use and competitiveness, and becomes too slow to respond to the challenges of the Fast World. Countries and companies with MIDS tend to be those run on Cold War corporate models - where one or few people at the top hold all the information and make all the decisions, and all the people in the middle and the bottom simply carry out those decisions, using only the information they need to know to do their jobs. The only known cure for countries and companies with MIDS is 'the fourth democratization.' This is the democratization of decision-making and information flows, and the deconcentration of power, in ways that allow more people in a country or company to share knowledge, experiment and innovate faster. This enables them to keep up with a marketplace in which consumers are constantly demanding cheaper products and services tailored specifically for them. MIDS can be fatal to those companies and countries that do not get appropriate treatment in time.

Democratization of... (1)Technology, (2) Finance, and (3) Information. Let's say it again. Democratization of Technology, Finance and Information. One more time, say it like you mean it:

Democratization of Technology, Finance and Information

OK, technology isn't that much of a big deal because what pays for technology? Come on, it's on the tip of your tongue. It starts with F and ends in inance. That's right, Finance. And while spending money on technology is well and good, we're talking about the democratization of finance which means... which means what? It means being able to access the economy. What economy? Maybe the global economy? So if the government of a country buys technology without allowing citizenry access to the global economy... oh, but you say, they do. Bank wires, what have you - but then what we really should be talking about is the efficiency of access to the global economy. I wax poetic on PayPal a lot because PayPal, in it's ubiquity on the internet, is the whipping boy for those that can't pay for things on the internet - like Flickr, or even getting money back from a virtual economy such as SecondLife.

And considering that some information has to be paid for, that hinders the democratization of information.

So the question that CARICOM needs to address here is: why are we so far behind on financial infrastructure that the limitations of the financial infrastructure are impeding progress on the democratization of Finance, the democratization of technology (in which we can actually export if the leaders extract their heads and scrub the brown rings off of their necks), and the democratization of information. We can talk about poverty - we should - but what we probably should really be talking about assuring that those in poverty benefit from... Democratization of Technology, Finance and Information. And if a fellow selling hammocks on the side of the road can't accept payment for a hammock over the internet then we don't have that, do we?

Virtual Economies as Another Level of Failure

Virtual economies and the lack of ability to participate in equal footing with the developed world is the culmination of the failures of the Democratization of Technology, Finance and Information. In the Caribbean, it's pretty apparent and in Trinidad and Tobago, the oil producing tiger of the Caribbean, there's really no excuse for the bottlenecks to participating in an internet economy - which is, of course, the basis for a virtual economy. But politicians will run and hide, ducking behind intrigues and failing to act as leaders. And the banking institutions of Trinidad and Tobago might as well be tossed on the pyre as well, because they are supposed to be looking out for the fiscal interests of their clients - allowing their clients to make money instead of spend it. Of course, they do this but they do it in such a way that it doesn't benefit everyone - it only benefits the businesses that already benefit from the banks. Smaller businesses are neglected; 1000 people with $100 dollars means less to these banks than 1 legal entity with $99,000 dollars. Of course they are bankers, not mathematicians.

Democratization of Technology, Finance and Information. Shouldn't that be something CARICOM is working on, not to mention all the governments in the Caribbean, the financial institutions... Claims of developed nation status by 2020 drown in a sea of people who misunderstand what development actually is, thinking it a static placeholder when it is the dynamic ability to... develop.

But they're gathering statistics. At least that can be entertaining.