Oscar: Emerging information technologies will soon make speed of information processing the single most important factor in the creation of individual, corporate, and national wealth. Consequently, the division of the world into northern countries -- in general rich -- and southern countries -- in general poor -- will soon be obsolete. Instead, there simply will be fast countries and slow countries, and thus a country' s economic well-being will not be a function of its geographical position but just a matter of its relative success in incorporating those new technologies. Sylvia: But the poor countries of the south lack the economic resources to acquire those technologies and will ttherefore remain poor. The technologies will thus only widen the existing economic gap between north and south. Sylvia's reasoning depends on the assumption that ['the speed at which information processing takes place will continue to increase indefinitely', 'there are technologies other than information technologies whose development could help narrow the existing economic gap between north and south', 'at least some of the rich countries of the north will be effective in incorporating new information technologies into their economies', 'the prosperity of the rich countries of the north depends, at least in part, on the natural resources of the poor countries of the south']