In the Future

The Future of South Africa Looks Hopeful-and Maybe Digital...
What would you think about technology's role in society? A good question.. Alvin Toffler, the author of Future Shock, Powershift and, most recently, War And AntiWar, was the keynote speaker. His primary thesis is that the arrival of digital technology is causing a fundamental shift in society that is just as significant as the shift caused by organized agriculture earlier in this millennium and by the Industrial Revolution at the end of the last century. Remember that Toffler and I were speaking in South Africa. This is a country where, until recently, most of the major corporations in the world refused to even try to make a profit. Other African countries refused to allow South Africa's commercial airplanes to fly through their airspace. Walls topped with barbed wire surround many of the houses of the rich and middle class. Iron gates and buzzer systems frequently restrict entry to restaurants and other businesses. South Africa is a rich and diverse country. The bush. Gold mining. Cape Town. But it's a country that's been brutally managed on behalf of a very small minority for the past 40 years. And that has screwed up its entire infrastructure. Forty percent of the country's able-bodied population is unemployed. More than 70% of its adult population is illiterate or semiliterate. In a country of 40 million people, there are only 3 million telephones-old ones at that, as I can attest from personal experience-and 2.5 million televisions. But South Africa now has something golden: hope. And that hope is centered on Nelson Mandela and his new government. So I come back to the original question: If you were Mandela, what would you think about technology in society? You and I know that technology could help South Africans make the leap from where they are now-somewhere between the First and Second Wave-solidly into the Third Wave and a leadership position in Africa and possibly the world. Technology, for example, could help South Africa build a communications infrastructure where none has existed. On June 1, the country switched on its cellular phone system for the first time. The government did a good job: it designed a competitive system based on the same standard as European mobile phones, meaning that the network was able to be built very quickly and the cost of the phones will fall very rapidly. Because it is competitive, the cost of making calls is substantially lower for the cellular system than for the monopoly wired system, which is managed by a state bureaucracy called Telkom. But the people who are living in and running South Africa have little experience with technology or its potential benefits, and Mandela's new government is only beginning to develop its policies and philosophy in this area. It's hard enough for those of us in advanced, industrialized countries like the United States to figure out how to use it. But imagine trying to justify the cost of a digital highway system when you live in a country that hasn't yet built an extensive concrete highway system.