On 10/28/04, Ed Deak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > While you are talking about the wonderful effects of hi tech etc. on > farming communities, what will happen to these millions who still had > something while they were on their lands, but now have nothing in city > slums ?
And that's only farming. Over ten years since economist Mahbub Al Haq created the Human Development Index and yet no perceptible appreciation of the very different, perhaps permanently, clashing economic systems that constitute 'cash' and 'non-cash'. We appear to have been permanently seduced (we = those living in the literate world) by the invention of money as a exchange mechanism to replace barter. When I say appreciation, I mean application of value to those economic systems (forest cultures, nomadic farming etc., etc.) that do not involve money. History is replete with example of cultures and lives destroyed by devaluation of a way of life. The most important impact of 'globalisation' is the replacement of all economic systems by cash values. This is what is deepening the divide between the 2 and the 4 billion. The digital divide is just another facet of it. I am not proposing here a solution to this, and certainly feel deeply impotent by not having even the hint of an answer to offer at this point, but I believe we owe it to ourselves to ponder upon it. Certainly, bringing the 4 billion into the rat race by stripping them of their wealth and earning capacity and starting them off as poor as church mice is hardly encouraging. Does GKD want to be the place for a discussion on this? -- Vickram ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html>
