From: tdboyce@cco.caltech.edu (Tom Boyce)
Subject: Techno Apartheid for a Global Underclass
Followup-To: misc.activism.progressive
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: caltech
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 20:50:43 GMT

The following is an article which appeared in the 8/6/92 edition of the Los
Angeles Times. Posted with permission.

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Techno Apartheid for a Global Underclass

Business: Transnational networks are already bypassing govemments to build
a world that excludes most of humanity.

By RICCARDO PETRELLA

BRUSSELS-The new order taking shape in the world today is not the one
imagined by obsolete statesmen of the Cold War era-that of nation-states
weighing in on a new global balance of power. Rather, a high-tech
archipelago of affluent, hyperdeveloped city-regions is evolving amid a sea
of impoverished humanity. Transnational business firms, in their ceaseless
pursuit of new customers, are creating these networks, which bypass the
traditional nation-state framework.

By placing science and technology solely in the service of the market
objectives of these companies, fading nation-state governments are not only
hastening their own demise; they are also accomplices in a global
development strategy that excludes most of the world's population.

If current trends continue, by the middle of the next century such
nation-states as Germany, Italy, the United States or Japan will no longer
be the most relevant socioeconomic entities and the ultimate political
configuration. Instead, areas like Orange County, Calif.; Osaka, Japan; the
Lyon region of France, or Germany's Ruhrgebiete will acquire predominant
socioeconomic and political status. Already within Europe, a web of
cooperative institutions has mushroomed among Barcelona, Lyon, Milan,
Strasbourg and Stuttgart-all without passing through a hierarchy of
national ministries.

The real decision-making powers of the future, it thus appears, will be a
network of transnational companies in alliance with city-regional
governments. On a global scale this new order will resemble the flourishing
14th- and 15th-century European economy, governed by the Hanseatic cities
and intercity alliances that hosted trading guilds and merchant networks.

Today, to beat a business competitor, anv international firm must be
present simultaneously in the largest, increasingly integrated, markets of
America, Japan and Europe. These megacities include Tokyo, Toronto, New
York, London, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Mexico City,
Sao Paulo, Seoul, Taipei, Bangkok, Paris, Zurich, Vienna and Milan.

The fading national governments or regional groups that support such a
strategy do so to attain global technological and industrial supremacy-to
become No.1- by capturing the allegiance of 800 million consumers within
these rich regions.

I call this approach "myopic utilitarian opportunism" because it excludes,
save for the tiny fraction of elites in such cities as Sao Paulo, Mexico
City and Hong Kong, any concern with development among the world's other 7
billion people who will inhabit this planet by 2020. Even if 60 million to
80 million Indians, for example, were linked to the prosperous archipelago,
10 times as many Indians would still be excluded.

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.

Absent a strategy to use science and technology constructively in the
global interest, the future, I fear, will be characterized by a prosperous
network of transnational firms and capitals of innovation that will grow
dynamically together in a closed club, leaving behind the great mass of
humanity that can't qualify as customers.

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.

Every day, this disarticulated world- what Alvin Toffler refers to as the
growing gap between the fast and slow worlds-is being formed before our
eyes. Example: The EC budget for one research program (the Esprit
microelectronics consortium) is 14 times the total EC aid to all of Latin
America.

When Europeans, Americans and Japanese talk about globalization, they sound
as if the world beyond their borders didn't exist. And they increasingly
tend to speak about each other in the terminology of "techno-nationalism,"
urging their people to high-tech mastery to fight for survival as soldiers
in an open technological war.

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.

Obviously, competition between economic powers is not going to stop. It
would be naive to expect such a thing. But its importance can be lessened
and brought into greater balance with the logic of cooperation organized
around projects that focus on reversing the disintegration of Africa, many
Arab countries, much of Latin America or the Indian subcontinent, and
linking them to the fast world.

The first effort should be to meet basic food and health needs, and to hold
back desertification by reclaiming lands for agriculture. Then the utmost
effort must be made to dismantle technological apartheid by plugging the
poor world into the telecommunications and transportation infrastructure
that connects the rich regions.

The G-7 nations have an enormous capacity to solve these problems. It is
only a matter of using science and technology for a purpose other than
serving the imperatives of market competition.

Riccardo Petrella is the director of the Forecasting and Assessment of
Science and Technology division of the European Community, responsible for
providing a futurist perspective to leaders of the EC.

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The copywrite for "Techno-Apartheid for a Golbal Underclass" is owned by
New Perspectives Quarterly, and they have given permission to redistribute
this article. I hope others find it as thought provoking as we did.

NPQ can be reached at

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