MEXICO CITY, (Apr. 17) IPS - Accustomed to driving on roads without
stoplights or traffic police, Latin Americans who have access to Internet are
stepping on the accelerator, leaving behind a trail of question marks
regarding the region's future.
It is the virtual community of Latin America. Everyone from government
bureaucrat to ballplayer is going electronic, tearing down barriers of space
and time. But they have also widened the gap between themselves and the masses
who remain far removed from the inexorable advance of technology.
The phenomenon not only has an impact in the area of communications. Its
explosive expansion modifies strategies of politicians and non-governmental
organizations, brings together people from distant latitudes, and sows seeds
of change in the regional culture.
With the exception of Cuba, where access to the global network of computers,
telephones and modems is controlled by the state, the number of users in the
rest of the region's countries is multiplying by leaps and bounds.
According to data gathered by IPS correspondents in 12 countries in the region,
there are currently some one million Internet users in Latin America, less
than 0.5 per cent of the population. But their ranks are mushrooming at such a
rate that by 1997, that figure could increase threefold or more.
"Whether we like it or not, the Internet phenomenon is here to stay. In some
manner, it changes the face of the region. It provides a two-way route of
communication, and is not censored," Soledad Robina, a researcher and
professor of communications with the faculty of Political Science of the
National Autonomous University of Mexico, told IPS.
The Internet is a network of computer networks where the users, through a
modem, have access to information that million of people in the world place
there every day in diverse images, audio messages and texts, and where the
user can transmit messages and receive responses.
Born as a means of communication for researchers at the U.S. Defense
Department, the Internet is today used by numerous educational centers
throughout Latin America for communication and research, by indigenous and
women's groups for information-sharing and debate, and by companies for
negotiating and offering goods and services.
The Internet, a space where there is freedom to talk, inform, play, threaten,
steal, lie or travel, is the most powerful cultural phenomenon since
television was invented, experts say.
But organized crime also frequently uses Internet services to launder money.
Roger Weiner, assistant director of the U.S. Treasury Department's office on
financial crime, said that up to $1 million can be laundered in a few seconds
with this mechanism, which leaves no traces.
Bill Gates, the founder of the Microsoft Corporation, says the true impact of
the Internet will be seen 20 years from now, when the generation that is
growing up today with the new information technologies begins to express
itself.
And Robina adds, "Then we will find out whether the gap between rich and poor
expanded or narrowed."
Far from the levels of technological development of industrialized countries
where 80 per cent of the Internet's more than 20 million users are
concentrated, only 11.2 per cent of the population in Latin America has access
to a telephone, indispensable for connection to the network.
In the countries of the North, there are an average of more than 15 personal
computers per 100 inhabitants. In Mexico, one of the most populated countries
in Latin America, that proportion is only two out of 100. And only 5.6 per
cent of inhabitants know how to use a computer.
The freedom allowed by the Internet is a privilege enjoyed by those who have
access to the technology. It is a way for thousands of individuals to
communicate without censorship, share their interests and have access to
information through their computers that they would not be able to get
otherwise.
For Pedro Casaldaliga, the Bishop of Matto Grosso in Brazil who recently
offered a conference and responded to questions through the Internet, the big
advantage of cyberspace is that it can become "a global transmitter of poetry
and faith."
But poetry and faith is perhaps only for a limited group of cybernauts. Others
are interested in pornography or erotic conversation, and yet others take
advantage of the network for political or academic pursuits.
There also those who offer counterfeit passports such as has occurred in
Central America, or those issue threats or vindicate attacks like a group in
Argentina.
Because anything, even enormous lies, can circulate on the Internet. The
network of networks does not have a central authority or owner. No one can be
kicked off. Nobody has a central switch to turn it off. It is something close
to a state of anarchy, analysts say.
The future of the Internet in Latin America, which is also the future of
communications and culture, will depend on what users do with the network, on
the breaching of technological gaps and on legislation that governments come
up with, Robina concluded.
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