The Digital Exclusion Map
For quite some time, Ireland represented the best example of a European country where poverty predominated. In the 19th century, around one million Irish people died of hunger, initiating the migratory wave towards the United States. Potatoes from the New World directly transplanted to the Irish fields and plants were victim of an unknown fungus. As 90% of the Irish diet consisted of potatoes, hunger victims accumulated at the same speed as the fungus spread. It is imperative to remember that at that time, Ireland belonged to the wealthiest nation in the world, Great Britain—the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution—who simply sat and watched.
We may learn a few lessons from the Irish hunger. In the first place, solidarity is fundamental, but not automatic. Solidarity is not something one buys in the supermarkets—. The creation of precedents without wealth, as in the peak of the Industrial Revolution, can walk hand in hand with chronic poverty. Secondly, we should not place all our eggs (or potatoes) into one basket. Lastly, one should beware of the goods brought from far away; what works in other countries, may not necessarily work in Brazil. In this aspect, the discussion recently initiated by the World Bank may result in good outcomes for Brazil. We should value more actions like the Mexican program to fight poverty, called Progressa (and value less the American food stamps). Progressa, besides being more adapted to our cultural and climate reality, is more updated.
I would like to emphasize, from the contemporary Irish (and Mexican) experiences, the search for modernity in social policies. Ireland currently has an explicit system of goals for the reduction of poverty and deliberate policies of digital inclusion.
The poor want more than poor policies. The principle of pure gratuity unrelated to quality should not be applied towards public policies or private actions. The poor appreciate what’s good and modern, and their appreciation goes far beyond the elite’s imagination (or us, newspaper readers). One of the best examples of the poor’s demand for quality were the entrepreneurial initiatives of Magic Johnson, the basketball idol who inaugurated with amazing success the luxurious multiplex movie theaters in Los Angeles’ African-American neighborhoods. The opening of a McDonalds in the Rocinha slum in Rio de Janeiro is a local example of the same type of phenomenon.
The Irish violence—or the actions of the IRA—presently has been appeased, maybe as a consequence of breakthrough economic and social policies, implemented in
the last few years. The similarities between the life or death conditions depicted in the movie “Gangs of New York” and those documented in “City of God” are striking.
Opinion polls point towards violence and unemployment as the two problems occupying a larger space in the hearts and minds of Brazilians. Marcos Lisboa and Mônica Vegas explore the relation between these two variables1. They show that the conditions that lead to unemployment during youth determine the probability of an individual being a homicide victim. This probability is greater during the whole of the individual’s life cycle, and not only during the period of high unemployment. The youth drawn into criminal activities tend to keep this lifestyle, even if the macroeconomic environment improves. These permanent costs of unemployment apply particularly to the larger Brazilian metropolitan areas, which in the past few years have been (and still are) the center of our economic and social crisis. In this sense, the changes in social policies occurring over the past decade, such as the expansion of the 1988 Constitution rural social security coverage, Cardoso’s Alvorada Project or even Lula’s Zero Hunger, are highly honorable, but they do not even out this picture. This is because the bonus of new actions has been directed to poorer locations, whereas the onus of the economic crises has focused on the large cities. Suburbs’ youngsters characterize Brazilian violence and unemployment figures. The unemployment rate between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine are 22.6%, four and a half times greater than in the group of thirty five to thirty nine year olds. It is worth mentioning that the youth unemployment rate has quadrupled between 1989 and 2001.
Aside from the scenario of inertial despair described above, new times bring new prognosis, which perhaps allow our troubled metropolitan youth to show its worth. In the first place, “Mother Nature” seems to have been taking contraceptives, as there will be fewer young adults knocking on the labor market doors in the coming years. The projections made by Eduardo Rios Neto and André Golgher, from Cedeplar, show a reduction in the population between fifteen and nineteen years of age throughout the next four years (a growth rate of -1.5%). Secondly, a new set of public policies towards metropolitan areas, such as the creation of the Ministry of the Interior (cities) — although with a reduced budget—and the a first-job program by the Ministry of Labor and Employment, are now in progress. Digital inclusion policies keep the promise of accelerating these actions. Roughly comparing, the first job program with digital
1 Richard Freeman shows that if we incorporated the relatively low American unemployment rate, the contingent of inmates, would change degree, becoming closer to the European equivalent.
inclusion versus one without is like comparing a Pentium 4 to a 486. Digital inclusion increases productivity, not only in the work environment, but also in the search for employment. Today, best systems for the recruitment of the labor force are found in the Internet.
Actions of digital inclusion are a good channel to raise opportunities for income generation and enhancing the youth’s citizenship in midst of the age of knowledge. All one needs to do is consider the list of the ten greatest fortunes in the world; a great proportion belongs to the new economy. These people came from below, which reflects the myriad of existing opportunities in this realm. Digital inclusion initiatives seek to disseminate the success that the least favored achieved through digital technology.
Digital illiteracy virtually leads to consequences in all fields of an individual’s life, as it affects learning capacity, connectivity and information dissemination. Access to digital technology may happen in many moments: at homes, in offices, businesses, schools, public services, etc. Digital inclusion is ever more a partner to citizenship and social inclusion; it is present when the voter confirms his choice in the electronic ballots or when someone uses the Bolsa-Escola cards.
The so-called digital gap is worrisome not only because the distance between those accessing digital technology and those who do not tends to increase in times of strong technological innovations, but also given the opportunity available to decrease this inequity through the gains of the poorest groups. There exist few diagnostics and debates about the digital inclusion/exclusion in the Brazilian context, due perhaps to the belated acknowledgement of the theme’s importance in the scope of public policies. The last debate which I had the opportunity to observe involved all the assistants for the four main presidential candidates, who practically limited themselves to discussing the creation of ITC jobs for the middle- and upper classes. The discussion rarely touches on the users’ or the poors’ perspective about access to technology, be him a worker, an unemployed or a student, or even a micro-entrepreneur.
An interesting aspect of digital inclusion initiatives, such as other youth-driven policies, is that focus and perseverance move hand-in-hand with their observed high returns. Half of the Brazilian poor are within this age group. The youth holds the future of Brazilian poverty. But while digital technology does not reach them…
It is not a mere coincidence that the Complexo do Alemão and the slums of Maré and Jacarezinho, all of which feature in the police sections of the national tabloids, are at the top of the carioca digital exclusion podium. In these communities, more than
96% of the households do not have computers, versus 41% of the Lagoa (wealthy) neighborhood, which leads the polls in the carioca domestic digital inclusion. Even when restricting the analysis only to those digitally included, those living in Lagoa display 6.5 more years of education and of age than the inhabitants of the three slums mentioned above.
Seven years ago, Rodrigo Baggio had a dream of young Afro-Brazilians using computers in slums. It was not only a dream in the figurative sense, such as those immortalized by Martin Luther King, Jr. (I have a dream) and John Lennon (The dream is over), but an actual dream. The next morning, and every day since then, Rodrigo
made sure to make this dream a reality to a greater number of young people. Since then, more than 350 thousand student in nineteen Brazilian states and eleven countries have graduated at the NGO called Committee for the Democracy of Information Technology (CDI) . The story began in Morro Dona Marta, a carioca slum situated in Botafogo.
Empirical occurrences, when robust, gain the same status as law. Equivalent to engineers who broke the law of gravity, propelling hydroelectric turbines, social entrepreneurs, such as Rodrigo Baggio, utilize Moore’s Law to foster digital inclusion.
Moore certified that during the last thirty years, the power unit of computers doubles every eighteen months. This means that a groundbreaking computer, purchased today, will be worth very little within a small amount of time. The low price of second hand sale creates room for the donation of computers. Complementarily, market researches reveal—enlightening sociology—that the status symbols of the new society reside in the conspicuous consumption of health and beauty items, such as fitness gyms, and electronic products, particularly computers. Therefore, beware; if you are overweight with an old wireless notebook, certainly you will not pass the test.
The high technological—or sociological—obsolescence of computers leads to the donation of equipment in good conditions. Digital donations must now be encouraged. Otherwise, we will have these cumbersome machines stalling, gathering dust in our homes and offices, while we could be providing opportunities to young people. According to the last Life Standard Survey (PPV/IBGE), only 4.6% of computers were donated. The market does not dream about the public good; society needs utopias. Computer donation mass campaigns are needed, such as the Christmas without Hunger, dreamt and implemented by Betinho over a decade and a half ago.
“The world’s greatest fortunes derived from the new economy. Now, how do we reach the youth and the underprivileged?”
“Seven years ago, Rodrigo Baggio had a dream of young Afro-Brazilians using computers in slums. Today, 350 thousand have been digitally included by the Committee for the Democracy of Information Technology.”
