Message-ID: <199609280512.AAA18305@anditel.andinet.lat.net> Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 23:25:51 -0500 From: Reinaldo Vicini <mailto:interext@ANDITEL.ANDINET.LAT.NET> Subject: Re: ideas of "appropriate technology" still respected? To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Dear Gene and friends:As a member of a development country and also an admirer of Schumacher's "Small is beautiful"I find the concept of "technology appropiateness" absolutely nonsense. With all respect, I feel it as an insult to intelligence of our developing countries since telecommunication technologies have made this world smaller. The use of all types of technologies has expanded all over the world. The creation of technologies however, is concentrating more and more, since developed countries have grown through our developing process higher barriers of entry to current leading technologies. We lost via "appropiateness" this wave of technological change on key technologies. We can't catch up, just get ready for the next one to happen.
In this developing country I have access in my house to 40 TV channels from US, France, UK, Germany, Italy, Peru and Venezuela. 90% of this country can now reach TV from Mexico, Peru and Spain and US through satelite TV in Spanish. I personally have access to Internet and talk daily with friends from all parts of the globe. I read everyday through Internet venezolan newspapers. It is impossible to deny that me, as many others are a powerful source of technology difussion that until few years ago didn't exist. Even more, I watch every Sunday and Monday nights american football games.
I just talked to my teacher at LSE in UK via e-mail and she kindly sent me her newest papers. Information is not a resource of developed countries anymore. Information is what it should be. A universal resource. And information increases a country's knowledge base which ultimately redefines the use and *choice* of technology.
One more thing. Ever since developing countries are starting to take neoliberal approaches and IMF Recipes, the countries are doing far better that in the past. Increasing taxation, eliminating silly and expensive subsidies, only used to feed corruption. Less government intervention telling us all citizen what was right to eat and look and dress favoring their protected business monopolies. Less tariffs, allowing people to compare between well manufactured and cheaper products from other countries against expensive and poor-quality local products. Unfortunely, the only logic that prevails is the only no-non-sense economics: good old supply and demand. Price increases with a lack of supply or/and excess of demand. That is what happened in developing countries, favoring the few priviledged who made the economy inefficient and concentrated large amounts of income. In developing countries must of us love economic openness because now we are enjoying better products cheaper, since the local producer now has to be productive. Long gone the times when the government protected -bribes given in the process of course- local monopolies via tariffs and exchange rate. Goodbye.. Adios... We don't want to see them anymore.
You have to live and suffer it to understand it. You have to suffer red tape, politics and corruption in order to feel it and be angry about it. You have to live paying high taxes in order to feel the anguish of not getting anything back from them and see government officers get rich in the process..
Technology appropiateness ÿMonopolies & Government intervention ÿCorruption & bribes & poorer people & wealth concentration
Best Regards
Reinaldo Vicini mailto:interext@anditel.andinet.lat.net http://www.colomsat.net.co/rotarios.bogota
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