Becoming Digital

If I chose to take “Becoming Digital” as my HASS-D this semester, it was for two specific reasons. The first is strongly related to the passion I have for international development. At first, the title of the course conjured up in me this confused idea of third world countries (especially in Africa) transiting from traditional media to modern digital media. I thought the class was going to talk about these developing countries and their new relationships with media. However, I rapidly came to realize that none of my expectations was going to be met. Unfortunately, for me, the class only focused on the western world and the distinctive digitalization process it was facing. However, I realized the possibility of using the concepts presented in the class and attempt to answer some of the questions that I was initially asking myself. What does “Becoming digital” mean for developing countries? What is there to gain or loose? These are the questions; I will try to answer in the rest of my essay.
“Becoming digital” is a process; as such, it involves a sequential progression from a starting state to a final state. The processes for both developed and developing countries share basic similarities. In both cases, the start and final states are quasi-similar. Media goes from a traditional form (oral, written) to a modern digitalized form (Internet). However, there exist fundamental differences. One fine example is the duration of the process: while the process started a couple of centuries ago in the developed world, it is more recent in the developing world and coincides with the beginning of colonialism and imperialism. Moreover, the process in developing countries skipped some important steps (i.e. )in order to reach its current state that is somehow comparable to the progress in the developed world(ubiquity of digitalized media). However, the progression in the third world countries was so fast that people, technology did not have the time to adapt to the new media settings. People have access to all the benefits of networked and digitalized media can provide, but they don’t take advantage of them because they do not know how to use them, or they don’t have the money to use them. For instance, in Kenya, I could connect to the internet and access all possible contents just like I do here in America but my use of internet was limited to Yahoo Mail because I didn’t know Wikipedia existed and streaming videos from YouTube all day long would be too expensive. People in developing countries today use their internet connection just like people in developed countries used internet ten years ago. Nowadays, the process of “Becoming digital” in both worlds has reached the same state when talking about technology but there is a decade shift when considering the human factor.
The hurried convergence towards a world where digitalized and networked media is ubiquitous presents some threats that are unique to the developing countries. In fact, one of the major dangers hanging over these countries is the lost of cultural identity. Even though the internet is a free space, where all the cultures can be expressed there is no guaranty for an equal representation. Taking into consideration that some cultures have an intrinsic ability to dominate over others, and that this ability heavily depends on the economical and political power of the culture in question there is no doubt that cultures from developing countries will be overly muffled. An explicit example would the millions of English articles in Wikipedia compared to the inexistent Rwandan articles. When a Rwandan student randomly browses wikipedia he doesn’t learn anything about Rwandan culture but instead absorbs random facts about English culture. That is the great threat that developing countries are now facing.