Capital disinvests, software engineers migrate, tourists find another fashionable spot, and global media close down in a downgraded region. But the human matter on which the network was living cannot so easily mutate. It becomes trapped, or downgraded, or wasted. And this leads to social underdevelopment, precisely at the threshold of the potentially most promising era of human fulfilment. We confront a growing social crisis.
Polarization is on the rise everywhere.
At a global level, the ratio of the income of the top 20 per cent of the population to the income of the bottom 20 per cent jumped from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 78 to 1 in 1994. And as a significant number of people are being excluded from access to regular jobs, they are moving onto the shop floor of crime. One could say that some have little choice. It is urgently necessary to reverse the downward spiral of exclusion and to use information and communication technologies to empower humankind. It will take a dramatic investment in overhauling the educational system everywhere.