International Communications

It’s incredible how today we take for granted the ability to travel from one end of the planet to the other in 24 hours. It might not seem like that when one is cooped up in an economy class seat for 13 hours or more at a time, but given that not that long ago, it took 6 weeks by boat to travel between the UK and Australia, this is now remarkably quick. And it has also become progressively cheaper too.

I think of these issues at the moment, as I am about to depart from a somewhat soggy (but beautifully green) England for Australia again. En route, I am staying in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, where I am looking forward to catching up with Patrick, an American friend whom I have not seen for about 12 years. Again, thanks to the internet, I was able to track him down again: when we first met in the early 1990’s, emails and websites didn’t exist. How life has changed.

This reminds me of the impact that mobile phones are having too. All over Africa, the very poorest members of society now have access to mobile phones and the huge benefits that this gives them. It is helping to democratise these countries and provided previously unprecedented access to business opportunities. Increasingly, access to mobile phones is possible in even in the most remote of areas. It is good to see how this rapid adoption of modern technology has destroyed the previous public sector monopoly of the old telephone company, which was immensely incompetent and inefficient (and often corrupt too). And this technology has opened up a dynamic, competitive telecoms market, with cheaper and cheaper services. Long may it continue!

Another sign of better communications is the spread of internet cafes throughout all but the most remote of rural communities in developing countries. Here is a photo taken in an ancient square in the historic city of Bhakatpur in Nepal, in September 2006. Mixing the old with the new!

All these improvement help to integrate our international community. We are exposed to the ideas, thoughts, views and values of other cultures and in so doing, increase our understanding of other societies. This exposure is a double edged sword: better understanding of others helps us to realise that we are basically all the same underneath the veneer of cultural differences, but it can also make us feel that our own cultures are threatened. It is interesting to note that although the wealthy Western countries appear to have a growing sense of cultural threat, their impact on the cultures of non-Western communities is substantially greater, and these Western values are often adopted with considerably less resistance than we emit in our apparently “open” and “tolerant” societies!