BY JEFF CHU Davos
The official buzz here — what people are supposed to be talking about — is
the digital divide. How can the members of the international community
together narrow that much-discussed gap between the technological haves
and have-nots? At the forum's opening session, WEF founder and president
Klaus Schwab set the intended tone for the next few days, solemnly
calling for ideas on how to "establish a world where everybody — each
global citizen — can live a dignified existence." Too bad most of the
world isn't even represented.
It's difficult to bridge a divide between two groups when one side isn't
around to help sketch the blueprints. Sure, you see a sari here and
there, and even some kente cloth. But of the 2,000-plus private sector
leaders in Davos, there are only nine from sub-Saharan Africa (excluding
South Africa), a region much discussed as one of the most technologically
underdeveloped in the world. While it's encouraging that a significant
minority of the business and industry chiefs here come from emerging
markets like Mexico, Brazil and Egypt, the demographic divide makes me
wonder how this bunch of suits can possibly solve the digital one.
The main session Thursday kicked off with a film by Italian artist
Oliviero Toscani, with imagery juxtaposing technological advance with
rudimentary tools, sophisticated production processes with low-tech
methods and man's forays into space with children's introduction to
manual labor. Afterwards, though, Toscani questioned whether the audience
really understood his point. He criticized the "absurdity" of the forum's
demographics — "it's so white!" — and he dismissed much of the debate as a
cathartic exercise to soothe guilty consciences.
Later, I spoke with Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, a participant from the
Philippines who campaigns on behalf of indigenous peoples' groups. While
she was glad to hear some delegates admitting the sorry byproducts of
hypercapitalist expansion, she lamented the fact that there weren't more
Third Worlders here to hear it. "All sectors of society should be here,"
Tauli-Corpuz says. But they're not, and that fact, she thinks, is a
legitimate cause for concern. She says that forum organizers really
shouldn't be surprised at the anti-Davos forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil,
or the predicted demonstrations here in town on Saturday. "It's so
corporate dominated, too," she says. "What do they expect?"
If any agenda for action comes out of Davos, it certainly won't contain
much input from the peoples it is supposed to help. But Third World
representatives here believe that every moment of awareness, any glimmer
of recognition of current conditions, gives reason for hope. And that,
for the moment, seems to be all they can ask.
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