Are you as rich as you’d like to be? Are you as knowledgeable as you’d like to be? Are you as compassionate as you’d like to be? Few of us can answer “yes” to all three questions, and yet, anyone reading this newsletter has access to the information necessary to be richer, smarter, or kinder… For example, a Google search estimates that there are over 52 million pages providing information on “how to be rich,” and many of the links from the first page of results take you directly to sincere advice on becoming richer (Google 2010).

If you want to become a world-class engineer or scientist, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology makes a significant amount of its courseware – lecture notes, exams, and videos of lectures – all available online, free (MIT 2010). And, if you’d like to know how to be more compassionate, the Dalai Lama’s official website provides plenty of suggestions and encouragement (Dalai Lama 2010).

In short, today’s Internet provides the information to answer just about any question we could ask, and just about any problem we could pose. But, as we are ourselves proof, access to the information does not necessarily lead to immediate benefit from the information: Information is not the bottleneck to our achieving whatever aspirations we may have. We may want to live a long, healthy life, but it’s not because we don’t know that a good diet and moderate exercise are healthful that we fill up on chaat and fail to get up for early morning walks. It’s because we have appointments to keep, children to feed, programs to run, and staffs to manage. It’s because at the end of a hard day, it’s much easier to munch on some chips and plop ourselves in front of the television, than to take the walk we didn’t take in the morning.

And, if it’s hard for us to implement knowledge on the Internet for our own sakes – we, with a solid education, decent savings, and enough time to read newsletters about e-government – imagine how much harder it would be for someone whose job consists of hard menial tasks for 12+ hours a day; whose daily wages go mostly to feeding the family; who struggles to read because formal schooling stopped with primary school. In the midst of this kind of life – which is the life of many urban construction workers and farm wage workers – how likely is it that mere access to the Internet, even if free, will result in new skills acquired, new habits formed, or new lives lived? It’s completely absurd!

Yet, this absurdity – the belief that supplying access to information in the form of the Internet will magically transform the world’s poorest communities – underlies many ICT-for-development projects.

Here, for example, are the opening two sentences of the vision statement for the World Wide Web Foundation: “We envision a world where all people are empowered by the Web. Everyone — regardless of language, ability, location, gender, age or income — will be able to communicate and collaborate, create valued content, and access the information that they need to improve their lives and communities” (World Wide Web Foundation, 2010). Their website makes it clear that when they say “all people,” they mean poor populations in development countries.[i]

These visions are beautiful and seductive in their rhetoric, and the organizations behind these efforts are laudable in their intent. Certainly, it would be great to see the potential power of the Internet positively impact the world – I am not suggesting otherwise. But, carefully wrapped up in this rhetoric is the implication that it is access to the Internet, by itself that enables positive impact, when in fact, much, much, much more than the Internet is almost always needed for cost-effective impact.

Some proponents of “bytes for all” have become more sophisticated with respect to this critique.  Some admit that the Internet alone isn’t sufficient. You actually need content, too. Or, you need services, too. Or, you need capable partners, too. But, these arguments are still suggesting that it is primarily the Internet that makes the difference. Well, let me suggest that if you had good content, it could be printed on paper or broadcast on TV for greater reach more inexpensively. Or, if you think you need good services, let’s see the services first, before talking about the Internet. And, finally, if you have good partners who are doing the lion’s share of the hard work… well, shouldn’t it be “partners for all,” and not the Internet? My point is that whatever value the Internet provides for impoverished populations is at best a supporting role.

Another trend these days, that I’ve heard in development overall, is to say, when someone argues against a cause, that “it’s not either/or – you can do both!” This is a good answer if you are interviewing for position with the United Nations, but it is plainly ridiculous. There are limited resources in global development, as Jeffrey Sachs is very eager to remind us. If it could always be “both,” what about CAT scans for rural health clinics? What about Mercedes-Benzes for all? The Internet isn’t cheap – the Internet for all means less of something else… and that something less might be the $10 per year of medical care that would prevent 80% of the illnesses in a village.

A persistent, related myth is to believe that information equals education. But, as our own relationship with MIT Open Courseware shows, the availability of information is not at all the same as a real education. Education additionally requires study and practice, often over months or years, before information is digested into practicable form. Giving children access to the Internet is not, in itself, a guarantee that they will learn anything. (If it was, we could all just leave our children in a room with a connected PC, and dispense with schools entirely.) The Internet is also full of compelling games that teach nothing. Without a caring teacher to supervise them, what will children prefer: Studying algebra online, or playing Super Mario Brothers?

Rather, what is essential to education is time spent studying the material, applying the material to practical use, and possibly creating new material of one’s own. Yes, the Internet could enable all of those things, but it can’t enforce all of those things. For that, you need a good teacher or a good parent or a good mentor. Where education is broken, it’s broken because teachers are not teaching well, parents are not vested in education, and children aren’t doing their work…and very little of that can be changed through technology.

I should make clear – I very much believe everyone should receive a good education; I much prefer governments that make their activities transparent to their citizens; and, I do believe that poor and marginalized people are often lacking information that could change their lives for the better. I also believe that for people who have some minimal education, who have a bank account, who have leisure time, and who have confidence in their ability to learn, the Internet is an incredible source of knowledge that has the potential to enable many great things.

But, if the goal is to enrich the extremely poor and empower the very marginalized, many other things beyond the technology and the Internet also need to exist – good infrastructure, economic slack, decent education, future orientation, social ties to power, etc. Without these other components, information alone is powerless. It’s not that information isn’t useful, and it’s not that information isn’t important. It’s that information is not the bottleneck.

Going back to you, imagine if you had a physical trainer, a gym membership, friends who exercised with you, and a cook who spares the grease. Even if you didn’t know that good diet and moderate exercise were good for you, you’d become healthier by the day. (In fact, recent research suggests that just being connected to a social network of obese people increases one’s chances of becoming fat (Tamburlini et al. 2007).) Note, also, that your physical trainer, your friends, or your cook could easily let you in on the secret about good diet and moderate exercise – you don’t need the Internet for that.

So, the next time you hear about another government project to bring the Internet to “the masses,” or the next time you’re involved in a project to close the “digital divide,” ask yourself this: Who is providing the additional infrastructure, the institutional support, and the funding for all of that, to make meaningful change happen? And, if infrastructure, institutions, and funding were provided, are we really sure we need the Internet, too?

References

Google. http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+be+rich. Retrieved Jan. 21, 2010.

MIT. MIT Open Courseware. http://ocw.mit.edu/. Retrieved Jan. 21, 2010.

The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. http://www.dalailama.com/. Retrieved Jan. 21, 2010.

Tamburlini G., Cattaneo A., Knecht S., Reinholz J., Kenning P., Rosén M., Christakis N. A., Fowler J. H. The Spread of Obesity in a Social Network. N Engl J Med 2007; 357:1866-1868, Nov. 1, 2007.

World Wide Web Foundation. http://www.webfoundation.org/vision/. Retrieved Jan. 28, 2010.