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MODELING OF DIGITAL FUTURES 299

inequality is that the impoverished sectors open the question of whether a US$100
are not of much interest to commercial laptop user in Sub-Saharan Africa will have
providers if these are left unregulated. And it the same kind of access to the Internet as a
would solve the problem neither of how to high-end user in NY or Tokyo. It also leaves
access password-protected, subscription- out the question of whether the low-end user
only quality content nor of how to provide will be able to engage in the same informa-
the education for turning passive consumers tion and communication multi-media activi-
into active users. ties as the high-end counterpart or whether
In the absence of valid regulations for he or she will be a second-class citizen in
toxic waste, obsolete NICT garbage from the cyberspace while being told to just wait for
well-connected countries is usually dumped the next new technology to trickle down and
under the rubric of recycling in the poorer solve any problem then.
countries, where it creates environmental
health hazards. It thus appears that the unfet-
tered market forces that prevent people at the
margins of the digital world from sharing the MODELING DIGITAL FUTURES
benefits of the cyber-age expose them at the
same time to its externalized cost. In a recent A new phase in the development of the
study, the Basel Action Network (BAN), a Internet might have just started but its mode
Seattle-based NGO, estimated that three and outcome are quite uncertain. That the
quarters of the NICT products shipped to future NICT will offer more capabilities and
Nigeria for recycling are actually neither more bandwidth supportive of audiovisual
usable nor economically repairable and end content is easy to imagine, as leading
up as unaccounted toxic waste, which is fre- research institutions are already building
quently discarded in poor shanty-towns with public funding Internet2 as a high-speed
(Puckett et al., 2005). This toxic waste successor to the current Internet. The trends
regime is partly made possible by the fact point to it being dominated by a mixture of
that the United States has neither ratified the commercial and USA security interests but
Basel Convention, which would make such there are also emerging counter-trends. The
practices illegal, nor implemented equivalent US Department of Homeland Security that
regulation. was set up in the wake of the attacks on the
Meanwhile hopes are being projected on World Trade Center in NY and the Pentagon
the new round of technologies. Wireless serv- in Washington seems bound to assume more
ices are currently experiencing a boom. The and more control in the name of the war
number of wireless phones has already sur- against terrorism. The Echelon system for the
passed the number of fixed phone lines. interception of international Internet commu-
Although wireless connections are currently nications through filters was already estab-
not as powerful as services via Digital lished prior to these attacks. Private
Subscriber Lines (DSL) or cable, it can be companies are inventing ever new technolo-
expected that they will be improved and even- gies for collecting data on consumers in a
tually will replace wired technologies. This legal environment which does not provide
presents opportunities especially in countries effective protection. An anti-trust suit against
with less developed fixed line infrastructures Microsoft was discontinued by the federal
but sufficient individual purchasing power. administration but individual states continue
The development of a US$100 laptop the legal battle in the USA, and the European
computer could push up diffusion rates Union has advanced its own legal proceed-
throughout the developing world and may ings to curb what it perceives to be flagrant
help computer manufacturers expand beyond monopolistic business practices undermining
rapidly saturated markets. But it still leaves fair market competition.