Having recently attended a Google-based workshop on the intricacies of relevancy when using search engine tools, keywords and adwords, I could not help but reflect on how the internet has opened up the field of information sharing, with the availability of new opportunities for the cross-border mobility of people and ideas. The internet has brought about a flatter power structure because age no longer has the monopoly over knowledge and wisdom. The advent of the computer has changed all that. Conventional wisdom is no longer conventional. In fact, in countries with good access to information resources, the reverse has actually happened. Knowledge has grown exponentially within the past two decades to the extent that no one person could possibily claim to be competent in all matters. With the development of the internet or other technology based means as the main avenue of access to information, the result is a shift from a culturally embedded hierarchy to a much flatter and progressive power structure.

Reflecting on the impact the internet has on the developing world, countries like India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, and their hierarchical structures comes to mind. Nothing gets done without endorsement from the top. Notice how their power structures at organisational and community level have shown little real progress over the past few decades, where conventional wisdom, and the authority that comes with it, is still the monopoly of the male-dominated formal organisational leadership. The continuing limited access to information would perhaps have the intended consequence of entrenching the institutionalisation of power, and reinforcing the dominance of authority within the existing social structure.

While I am not advocating that access to the internet and its attendant benefits is the universal panacea for progressing community development and empowerment in developing countries, the greater penetration of the access to information together with the internationalisation of knowledge and idea mobility, would go a long way in loostening things up.

A powerful catalyst for change in developing countries would be greater access to knowledge and ideas through wider and cheaper internet broadband in homes and offices, better computers which open web pages faster, and low cost availability of genuine software.

Authentic change would then come from within. And it will be organic change which will spread by itself.

James Meyer