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Technology Should Enrich Humanity

Posted on: Tuesday, 21 February 2006, 21:00 CST

By Jeff Ooi

BILL Gates and his wife Melinda, alongside Irish rocker Bono, have been jointly named Persons of the Year 2005 by Time magazine for their charitable work and activism aimed at reducing global poverty and improving world health.

Interestingly, the honour, especially for Gates, has nothing to do with the personal computers and software that made him a legendary figure in information technology. Instead, the Gates are being honoured for their philanthropic contributions via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - the world's largest foundation, valued at US$ 29 billion, which spends almost the same amount each year as the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Time stated that the foundation has saved at least 700,000 lives in poor countries by investing in vaccination programmes, donated computers and Internet access to 11,000 libraries, and sponsored the biggest scholarship fund in history.

It's a thought-provoking event as the honour's bestowed on Gates exactly 23 years after the PC, the device that created much of his personal fortune, was named Time's Person/Machine of the Year in 1982.

The irony is, Gates would rather dispense his wealth through philanthropic activities than to allow his company to offer affordable copies of Microsoft Windows in the resource-impoverished developing countries targeted by his foundation. What does that tell us?

Time's editor-at-large Nancy Gibbs wrote a tribute saying that Gates was honoured for `being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re- engineering justice and then daring the rest of the world to follow'.

Paying tribute to the Irish singer, Time said Bono's campaign to make rich countries address the debt of poorer ones has had an equally impressive impact on the world. For the record, in 2005, `Bono charmed and bullied and morally blackmailed the leaders of the world's richest countries into forgiving US$ 40 billion in debt owed by the poorest,' the magazine said.

That says a lot for technology. The wealth and progressiveness it created for the world should be harnessed for the well-being of humanity. The world should play the dual role of the benefactors and the ultimate beneficiaries of technological advancement. Gates and Bono have just shown us the way, and challenged us to replicate them. I hope more corporate entities and individuals will join the fray.

On that note, I suggest we spend some time reflecting on the past year and try to make sense of what lies ahead in the months to come.

First, the bad news. The global digital divide is here to stay. As evident from the various researches and reports presented during the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis last November, the jarring gap between the info-rich and info-poor is widening into a chasm that can no longer be reconciled. This, not surprisingly, is closely tied to the north-south disparity that didn't get addressed in the last millennium. Let's brace ourselves with the surety that this disparity will only develop into new flash points of conflicts in decades to come. Global unrests, perpetrated by inherent political alienations and economic imbalances, will take the form of complexities we have never experienced before in our civilisation. We really can't figure out how it will be amicably resolved and this thought is very upsetting.

On the other hand, on home ground, there have been several positive signs that should spur us towards market liberalisation and seek accessibility for affordable services. It is re-affirmed that healthy competition will provide attentive customer service and end- user lower cost. The most significant example is cellular telephony.

The entry cost for a prepaid mobile account has dropped to RM8.50, compared to over RM200 a couple of years ago. In tandem with the three- corner competition among the incumbents, the floor for intra-network call charges has been lowered to 10 sen per minute. The operators are not giving away their margins as the increased subscriber base provides them with call traffic, precipitating in higher utilisation of the infrastructure.

Secondly, market focus has since shifted towards value creation, and users are rewarded, via free airtime and bonus credits, based on loyalty. This demands spending on customer relationship. Operators who don't buck up on CRM will lose out to their competitors. It's basically a zero sum game as the user growth is tapering off towards a plateau after years of expansion.

It is hoped that this phenomenon of fair competition, innovative customer-engaging marketing strategies experienced in the cellular market will be replicated in other convergent industries, like broadband and satellite TV services. The regulator just needs to give them a push to make things happen.

Source: Malaysian Business

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