 
Date: 23 Nov 1992 11:11 -0500 (EST)
From: BLUECANARYINNAOUTLET 
Subject: Technoapartheid
To: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@ANDREW.CMU.EDU
Message-Id: <01GRHM4Q858W0016VY@YANG.EARLHAM.EDU>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT

Hey again.

   Thomas Price (I think) writes:

>The following is an article which appeared in the 8/6/92 edition of the Los
>Angeles Times. Posted with permission.
>
>===========================begin article=====================================
>
>Techno Apartheid for a Global Underclass
>
>Business: Transnational networks are already bypassing govemments to build
>a world that excludes most of humanity.

   This sentence could about sum up the thesis of an article which has
influenced my thinking about the near future quite a bit as well: "The
Secession of the Successful", by Robert Reich (have to find some of his
other stuff sometime), printed in a section of the New York Times a couple
years ago.  He talked about the United States in particular, but I think
his observations are kinda indicative of the way the world is going.  He
talked about a "fortunate fifth" of the American population (sounds
generous to me-- I wonder if it isn't really more like a tenth?), which he
defined by income, who for years (but notably during the '80s) have been
pulling their resources away from the public sector, creating systems
whereby money can be kept circulating in their own increasingly closed
communities...

>By RICCARDO PETRELLA
[...]
>Obviously, committing the vast majority of the world's population to a
>global underclass is not only unjust, but also unsustainable in a
>well-armed world that is ecologically interdependent and exposed to
>unstoppable waves of mass migration.

   This especially echoes the concerns of Jacques Attali, the high-ranking
French bureaucrat who wrote a book titled *Millenium* either last year or
the year before... he also had a pretty intelligent-looking article in the
current *New Perspectives Quarterly* (an excellent magazine!), which I
only had time to skim.

>Imagine how such an order would redraw the world map: On one side we would
>see a dynamic, tightly linked archipelago of technopoles constituting less
>than oneeighth of the world's population; on the other would be a vast,
>disconnected and disintegrating wasteland that is home to seven out of
>every eight inhabitants of Earth.

   Summoning up exactly Attali's vision of a world order brutally divided
between the haves and the have-nots:

   "...If the people of power in the emerging spheres of prosperity knew
how to think in the long term, they would watch carefully the peripheries
at their doors.  In the coming world order, there will be winners and
there will be losers.  The losers will outnumber the winners by an
unimaginable factor.  They will year for the chance to live decently, and
they are likely to be denied that chance.  They will find themselves
penned in, asphyxiated by pollution, neglected through indifference.  The
horrors of the twentieth century will fade by comparison." [*Millenium*, 84]

>Aware of the pernicious influence of the competitiveness metaphor and of
>the global apartheid-like consequences of the contest, I believe that
>Europe, the United States and Japan should give priority to placing science
>and technological development at the service of the entire population of
>the planet, not just the millions of consumers who can be sold some
>superfluous gadget.

   And this is why, when we are thinking of these kinds of communities as
an alternative to the horror of the global situation, I think we should
not turn to the mechanisms that create the situation (and are accelerating
it to its crisis) for sustenance-- the capitalism of multinational
corporations, the global culture of greed.  It won't serve us ethically or
pragmatically in the future.  And when we are thinking of the external
mission(s) that we want these communities to have, we should not think in
terms of mere short-term profit; if they must sell goods, services, or
information to the outside world, let these be things that in some way
contribute towards the forging of peace and stability, and towards the
demolition of unjust institutions.  I know that's a lot to demand, but
what else, in the end, will do?


   --Jesse.



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