While perusing the daily headlines I have on my Yahoo homepage, I came across a short article from Business Week about the top ten countries with the greatest disparity between the rich and the poor. I skimmed the article and my reaction was an interesting mix of both shocked and totally unsurprised that almost all of the countries are most often thought of as very wealthy, modern and brimming with fascinating culture. Just so that we’re on the same page, I’ll list the countries in order (there are a couple of ties in the mix): Hong Kong, Singapore, the United States, Israel, Portugal, New Zealand, Italy and Britain, Australia, Ireland and Greece.
These countries all have access to the highest levels of technology and their schools teach students (from what I understand at least) about the different forms of technology that are available to them. Particularly young people from all of these nations are up to date on web fads like Facebook, Wikipedia, blogs, and so on – I’ve learned from living overseas and meeting many people from different backgrounds that young people from my own generation pretty much have the same tech desires and knowledge (I know this is a broad generalization and I’m sure there are many examples to prove otherwise, but overall I would say that my claim isn’t unrealistic). I thought it was so bizarre that countries with so much opportunity for success, with some of the richest most powerful people in the world, just aren’t helping their own people to gain access to the bare minimum of the amazing facilities we have today.
This topic is particularly interesting for me because I grew up in Taiwan and Turkey (neither of which are on the list I’m happy to say) and I have friends who have lived in those other countries, and I never heard about the “poor” side of life in any of those places from them. Particularly Hong Kong and Singapore were the most shocking to me – I have a couple friends who attended the Singapore American School as expatriates, and another who is actually Singaporean but grew up overseas as well, and none of them have ever told me anything about the insane amounts of poverty that are clearly present there. I have a couple friends who have Hong Kong passports but grew up in Taiwan (they spend significant amounts of time there visiting family) and I’ve been to Hong Kong myself, but the poverty there never seemed to be a topic of discussion. I know about the poverty in the US and Australia, but I’ve never had to experience or even witness it properly, so I cannot even say that I fully comprehend the awful situations we have here either.
It seems to me that even with computer mediated communications we still aren’t using our knowledge to its full advantage (or to much of an advantage at all really) – we are too focused on getting that new iPod or whatever it is we desire, forgetting that there are millions of people who don’t even know what an iPod is, or can barely imagine that they exist in the first place.
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/107980/countries-with-the-biggest-gaps-between-rich-and-poor
Do you think that technology can level out these inequalities? You point out that all these countries have access to modern technology, but you don't say how they can be used to fight poverty. I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just curious to hear what role you think technology should play in solving these problems.
ReplyDeleteInteresting blog post... While disparity seems to be a developing world issue, I found it fascinating that most of the countries the article listed are developed, Western states whose "poor" people are much better off than most people in the world. You bring really interesting points, like what you said about how technology and these levels of education still hasn't brought the ideal results that it should. Do you think that the web 2.0 phenomenon levels out these disparities as people all over the world are free to access things like Facebook and twitter as long as they have access to a computer and the internet--how can we take advantage of this democracy?
ReplyDelete*Sorry I sound like such a Clarkie ;)
Thanks for bringing my attention to this article. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I'd never heard of the Gini.
ReplyDeleteYou mention that you think this disparity has an important relationship to technology, would you be interested/willing to draw this connection our further.
Ok so first off I fail at blogs and didn't see that the comments don't just automatically show up on the main page, you have to click the tiny "comment" icon underneath it that I hadn't noticed.... sorry for the delay on my response.
ReplyDeleteI reread my post and I obviously didn't give any good examples of how technology should be used, ergo the first comment. One thing that I am constantly surprised at is the lack of basic communication technologies in rural areas of even the most modern countries, like phones, basic internet and so on. Things that would make it easier to contact the larger cities or even between people within the poorer communities. The lack of communicative devices in poorer communities seriously limits the extent to which they can get out of their impoverished condition due to their lack of knowledge in modern technology (which is required in many careers).
I would say in response to the second post that Web 2.0 definitely has the capacity to help level out the playing field so to speak, but of course it does require everyone to have access to a computer and an internet source in the first place, which is not available to many many people, even in modernized countries. However if we could make that available to more people, (not to sound overly cheesy) it definitely opens people's eyes to a world full of possibilities that they may have never even dreamed of. It can give them the power to help their own communities instead of having to wait for others to step in further.
I think I drew the connection out further with my response to the first two comments... in regards to the last comment :P If not please tell me if there's something else you had in mind.