A little knowledge, or rather, information, is a dangerous thing.
Here's an example: Google 'bird' (as in, do a search in the Google search engine), and, amongst the links to bird recognition and bird song sites, the results are likely to be peppered with news items about avian influenza. Is it possible that bird 'flu is nothing more than Illness by Internet; a pandemic of fear spread by greedy pharmaceuticals seeking to increase sales?
Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate), the antiviral purported to be the sole antidote to the killer virus which has killed a grand total of 104 people worldwide, doesn't come cheap. The Bush administration's draft plan for fighting an imminent bird flu epidemic which in a best case scenario will kill a minimum of 200 000 Americans (the number could rise to 2 million) justified the need to order 20 million doses of Tamiflu at $100 each – a whopping $2 billion, for a drug that may or may not be effective in fighting an epidemic that may or may not happen.
It follows that Gilead, the manufacturers of the so-called wonderdrug, and Roche, who has exclusive commercial rights to Tamiflu, are in a position to post excellent results for their shareholders, who include US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsveld and former US Secretary of State George P. Shultz.
Profitability, it seems, increases in proportion to the narrowing of the Digital Divide. As news of the impending doom that the virus will bring speeds around the globe, reaching the most remote populations, so fear, a global phenomenon, multiplies. With this terror of extinction comes increased expenditure on preventitive drugs. And what better way to feed the need than to announce that there might not actually be enough of the drug to go around?
I'm sure that Tim Berners-Lee, father of the internet, never expected his brainchild to stay as unsullied as he intended, but in the hands of those who seek to prostitute it, it is becoming a shameless tart.
By the time those poor forgotten souls in Outer Mongolia finally get their high speed bandwidth, will they too be getting nothing more than a fatal dose of fear?
In the Information Age, defining the digital divide is the debate that rages at the heart of the conflict between business and community interests.
In the world of commerce, where success is measured in the Mighty Dollar, the divide is what separates a product from a potential market.
Information is the global currency, so making donations of selected information can mean healthy returns. It pays to lobby for increased investment in The Great Unplugged, a vast, untapped market.
Where the interests of community are a priority, the divide is what separates people from the information they need to improve their quality of life and transform their society.
Ideally, this information would point to resources at hand, locally available knowledge and products that respect and promote local culture.
The problem with the internet is that it is getting clever. Where it used to be a dumb, innocent and open conduit for all information, it is rapidly falling under the spell of high finance, disguised once again as fear, as rumours of security violations are spread and the necessity for censorship is promoted. Where information is seen as currency, certain information is given higher value. Which is why, when you search for bird you get flu.
As citizens of the World Wide Web, our job is to keep the internet as stupid as possible, away from the corrupting influence of the network pimps, otherwise the next generation of netizens will have to contend with a Babylon of pornographic infiltration that dictates their needs, rather than giving them solutions to needs that they already know they have and an open forum to express those needs. © Debbie smit – The Sunday Independent
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