Developing world needs knowledge more than hardware, speakers say
K. Oanh Ha
Mercury News, 22 April 2005
Is the digital divide dead?
Yes, concluded speakers at a Santa Clara Univeristy symposium Thursday where participants agreed that throwing computers at the developing world isn't the answer to global inequity. What's really needed is a bridge to close the knowledge divide, according to the speakers.
"The problems comes down to much more than technology," said Geoffrey Bowker, executive director of the university's Center for Science, Technology and Society, which hosted the conference, also sponsored by Applied Materials. What we need is open source science... a framework where knowledge and information is shared with the developing world."
Speakers at the event, attended by about 200, talked about the importance of creating a "digital commons"-- a public, online space for knowledge that would help alleviate social and economic problems in poor countries, as well as inequities between the developed and developing worlds.
Some said it was time to rethink intellectual property laws that often prevent poor countries fron tapping into useful innovations and technology. "We should recognize that intellectual property rights are competing with basic human rights," said Raoul Weiler, head of a European think tank.
Multinational companies have a responsibility to help poor countries overcome the knowledge divide rather than just "raiding" them, speakers said.
One speaker cited an example where an American company did raid the knowledge of a developing country, In Ecuador, a video documentary was put on the Internet about a plant that generations of indigenous people in the Andes have cultivated to treat lung cancer. Shortly after, a California company came in to commercially extract the plant for cancer medicine, said Karin Delgadillo, executive director of the Chasquinet Foundation. Her organization created the information center that made putting the documentary on the Internet possible.
"The company just came in and took the ancestors' wisdom without compensating the local people."
Speakers also called on Silicon Valley companies to help create a framework for sharing global knowledge. One way is for companies to target their products at poor communiuties, rather than those with the highest purchasing power, said Brooke Partridge, director of market and business development in Hewlett-Packard's emerging market solutions division.
