One laptop hooked up to wireless internet hands power to the single individual in society.
No longer does a person need the umbrella of institutional power to transform social space. The Internet and mobile computing empowers the individual.
So President Bharrat Jagdeo’s initiative to hand out laptops to 100,000 families, and to hook up high speed internet throughout the country, could be the defining strategy to generate the 21st century aspirations of citizens.
This strategy to use the platform of technology to deliver mediated power to each and every person in the land could be the turning point for the nation.
In this election year, we look on passively to see enormous verbal fights erupt within political parties, and in the National Assembly as Members of Parliament squabble about the government’s lack of imagination in the national budget.
These harsh public power struggles harm the body politic like cancer, and could be amputated this year.
With the virtual communications revolution, we witness the start of a new society: one where knowledge and personal initiative empowers you, me and anyone willing to reach out to others.
The days of power lying in the hands of merely the wealthy, or the political, or the icon of society, are over, for society has renewed itself around the power of the electric microchip.
When the hydropower plant at Amaila Falls starts pushing cheap, reliable electric power to homes, the transformation could be complete
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With dependable electric power, and with mobile computing hooked up to a national Internet grid, each and every person could reach out to others with original ideas, transformational solutions and inspiring new projects.
Such a society demands a fresh way to look at the problem of development confronting us for so long. Now, people matter. The human capital potential of the land becomes the defining natural resource asset.
Historically, we built our fragile, creeping economy on the trade of primary raw material. Time has caught up with that structure. Even sugar is in trouble now.
The 21st century shapes up to be the century of ideas, knowledge and the virtual assets of a thinking people.
This is not to say that society becomes utopian. We still have to plan for and guard against sub-cultures of dysfunctional groups and gangs of people who turn out to be illiterate adults and degenerative social misfits.
But the potential for anyone to hone the self-discipline and resourcefulness to conquer the tides of misfortune now opens the doors of power to each one of us. We ought not only to realize this, but to prepare our lives for it. In fact, we must prepare our children and the next generation for such a powerful society.
One media report quotes President Jagdeo saying that the laptop project is an education initiative. If education is the only goal, then the President is missing the full potential impact of his initiative.
This initiative opens the society to the global stage. Now every member of the society can walk out on the stage of life and play his or her role, according to a script, a life plan. So any person can today write out a life plan of vision, goals and action plan, and work that plan to achieve something of worth in this life.
The developed world already empowers its citizens for such a life.
Tom Head wrote about this new global power of the individual in a book, titled ‘It’s Your World, So Change It’. The sub-title is promising: “using the power of the Internet to create social change”, Head writes, means that “no matter where you are, you can be anywhere and change everything”. The book is a textbook of online “activism” and details stories, and online tools, of how individuals made a difference in their society with the tools of a laptop and the Internet.
Apart from Head’s book, many authors write about the power of the individual equipped with a laptop and Internet connection.
These include blogs that you can access for free online, books and even multimedia documentaries.
David Bornstein wrote a book he called “How To Change the World”. This is the kind of optimistic promise that this new world has opened up for each and every human being in this mediated global village.
Bornstein says his book “is about people who solve social problems on a large scale. Most of them are not famous. They are not politicians, or industrialists. … They are scattered far and wide – in Bangladesh, Brazil, Hungary, India, Poland, South Africa, and the United States.”
We look forward to see Guyana added to this list.
Bornstein calls this new social movement the “citizen sector”. In our own country, where for so long the average citizen resigns in passive non-action to whatever the State dictates, the era of this citizen sector promises to transform society and generate social progress.
Bornstein’s vision looms large and full of great promise: “Is it possible to eradicate poverty? Extend health care to every corner of the world? Ensure that every child in every country receives a good education?”
In our society of close to 40 percent chronic poverty and growing pockets of illiterate ghetto sections these promises take on particular significance.
“These visions may seem beyond reach today, but … we can, in fact, change the world in ways that seem unbelievable.” The author notes that “there is a hidden history unfolding today: an emerging landscape of innovators advancing solutions that have the potential to transform life around the globe.”
As our own Guyanese citizen sector emerges and evolves under these two ground-breaking initiatives of President Jagdeo, we should note what Bornstein’s study shows: “The citizen sector is, in fact, beginning to resemble a market economy of social ideas, characterized by a rich diversity of grassroots institutions and energetic entrepreneurs crafting solutions that no one could have anticipated, let alone plan for. No government could have built or legislated Childline or the Grameen Bank”.
Bornstein concludes his excellent work with a strong urge to governments to support and fund the citizen sector as a way to advance solutions that work for all of the society.
President Jagdeo would do well to take note and enlarge his vision of his initiative from merely an “education” move, to see this mobile computing culture as a new arm of governance: the citizen sector of empowered individuals.
And here’s hoping that the new government that takes office after upcoming national elections would expand the citizen sector to embrace the Diaspora. Overseas-based citizens working in partnership with the local citizen sector could cause major transformation in this country.
President Jagdeo has generated the initiative for individuals to harness their latent human potential as a power force in the governance process.
This opens great possibilities for the global Guyanese nation to work together online as a global citizen sector: a sector comprising individuals empowered with the tools of mobile computing and access to global online communities.
This writer can be contacted at beingshaun@gmail.com
