Challenging the SA reality

Sometimes I wonder if we`re not falling prey to believing our own BS. As it's quite small, this is a rather incestuous industry. Our marketable audiences, in many cases (as in the case of this column), are very limited: there are only about a million Internet users in SA (don`t let any survey tell you differently). According to this week`s Dialtone column, there are also only 2.5 million mobile phone users in the country. That is the sum total of technology early adopters and the complete number of those that I can hope to reach with anything I write here.

I think that in terms of our South African reality, we`ve stopped making the connection between technology and development.

Lost connection

As a consequence, I think it`s a given that we don`t make an effort often enough to look beyond the small ivory tower limits of our IT industry, our circle of friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Practically everybody I know (with the exception of my parents, who don`t seem to see the point, and my sister, who lives in Germany, a very unwired country, so she`s forgiven) has an e-mail address. My primary way of communicating with most of them is e-mail. I pay most of my bills using my Internet banking facility and I regularly write my doctor e-mail.

But in all this, we tend to lose focus on the broad consumer base out there... (We say things like "Out there".) Most people in the "real world" don`t have an opinion about the Internet. Most of them have no idea what the e-conomy does for them (in short, probably nothing in the short to medium term). The vast majority is still baffled that banks won`t actually issue bank savings books anymore.

I think that in terms of our South African reality, we`ve stopped making the connection between technology and development. I am guilty of this as much as the next person. More and more, I hide in my office or home, take it for granted that the work I do reaches only a small percentage (between 3% and 4%) of the population and don`t think about issues much beyond that.

"Boy, what a miserable person," you`ll think now. Not really, I`m just alarmed at what I find myself saying to people from other countries who inquire as to the penetration of Internet services, or telecommunication services, or even plain and simple PCs into SA. The reality, right now, is that the numbers are alarmingly small, given that North America, for instance, sports the Internet in practically every walk of life and double-digit percentages of all homes. And there's even less being done about this alarming reality.

Invariably, when questioners from overseas ask, I find myself talking about the education system. I talk about the racial divide, about how I, in the Northern, wired suburbs of Johannesburg am basically living in the same society they are, while the rest of this country has no grasp of its marvels and tribulations. What I don`t find myself talking about much anymore is what I`m doing about it. I hear others in this industry talk about the brain drain, about how hard it is to employ sensibly educated black IT professionals...

As an industry, I think that we`re still fundamentally overlooking a simple thing: we have to invest in our own future. Broadening the penetration of telecommunications services and personal computing into SA is imperative from a business perspective, even if it`s going to cost us a lot of profits in the medium term. We`re already running out of good people to employ; soon we`ll run out of anybody to employ. As usual, I don`t want to be unnecessarily alarmist, but I fear that we should be supporting any and all technology-focused development initiatives we can get our hands on.

If they don`t exist, we should be creating them. The so-called "black empowerment" initiatives that most major IT groups have aren`t really good enough, I think. They merely attempt to transfer some ownership stakes to the previously disadvantaged, some with better success than others. What is required, though, is broad-based training and an even bigger roll-out of infrastructure access.

Sometimes, it would be good if we all focused on that again and thought about what we can contribute. If nothing else, it might make us feel more like we`re part of this country and not members of an odd migratory technology tribe whose roots are wherever it hangs its network cables.