Instant Communication Changes Customs, Politics in Developing World | Voice of America - English
High-tech gadgets such as cell phones are bringing profound change to developing nations, and not just economic progress. Text messaging, the Internet and other innovations are having wide ranging social repercussions, from exposing human rights abuses by repressive governments to breaking traditional taboos governing courtship and other human relationships.
Young people in India, like everywhere else in the world, haveembraced the cell phone, using it for everything from calling home tocontacting members of the opposite sex. Indian sociologist Radhika Chopra says the cell phone and othertechnological innovations are having an impact on how some young peopleare courting each other these days, mainly because parents have lesscontrol. "The behavior of teenagers, and young adults in the public space wasmuch more visible and regulated, you might say," Chopra said. "Youcouldn't express unwanted [unsanctioned] love, let us say, in a publicspace - and you still can't, actually." "But the Internet andthe mobile phone have created a kind of subset of society of youngstersin same age group, of the same kinds of backgrounds or even acrossclass and caste backgrounds and so on. And I think this has actuallyenabled them to be much more independent in their thinking about, let'ssay, what kinds of marriage would they look for," she continued. Not all young Indians welcome these new freedoms. Isha, afashionable young woman in New Delhi, rejects overtures via textmessages. "Once or twice it happened, some unknown people texted me andI just told them to mind their own business and not to disturb me,"Isha said. Advances in communications via the Internet and cell phone arehaving similar impacts on other traditional societies such as Iran.They are helping to break down religious and other restrictions,according to Arthur Molella, director of the Smithsonian's LemelsonCenter for the Study of Invention and Innovation in Washington. "If you have a society that is very restrictive about publicrelationships between men and women, men and women still have to gettogether in some way, and these technologies provide a means of makingappointments with one another that weren't available before. So I thinkinevitably they have this kind of subversive effect on authority,"Molella said. Such an effect on authority can include exposing repression inclosed societies. Images of the protests in Tibet earlier this yearwere caught by digital cameras and transmitted to the outside world.The resulting international outcry over the Chinese crackdown is stillresonating, and threatens to spill over into the Olympic Games, whichChina is hosting. In China itself, the Internet has served as a way to organizeopposition to the construction of chemical plants and other projectsviewed as harmful to health and the environment. recently reported that residents of theprovincial capital of Chengdu took to the streets early this month in apeaceful protest against the construction of a multi-billion dollarpetro-chemical plant. The article says the protest was organizedthrough Web sites, blogs and cellphone text messages. Anti-government protests in Venezuela also have been staged throughtext messages sent out by organizers. Molella says governments arefinding it increasingly difficult to stop these politicalmobilizations. "Just as the resistance in the Soviet Union took advantage of thefax machine at one time, these are infinitely more powerfultechnologies for getting information out very quickly," Molella said."Governments usually have to catch up if they want to stop somethingproliferating on the Internet. I think it's this instant communicationand talking back to authority, as it were, that is changing thepolitical scene." Molella and others say the full magnitude of these technological innovations and their impact on societies have yet to play out.