Welcome to
GlobalEyes

Your Weekly Window
in the Mirror of the World.
Spartacus R.
editor of Global Africa Pocket News,
GlobalEyes Online* columnist, author of "Violation" and "The Maãt Mystery" takes another look at the world.

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Africa and the Internet

What is the Internet**?

Why and for what purpose was it created?

What relevance is the Internet to Global Africa (Black people)?

Is it nothing to do with us, as some among us believe?

Or are there ways in which it can be used for our benefit?

If we cannot use it to our advantage, what should we do about it?

What can we do about it?

Can we afford it?

These are just a few of the questions we hope to answer in the course of this discussion.

What is the Internet?

With my limited lay knowledge of the Internet, I would describe it as a global network of individual and networked computers. These computers, communicate with each other via the global telecommunications system, including telephone lines, fixed fibre optic cables, radio waves and satellites and use modems to encode and decode their computer language for transmission. It is a broadcast/narrowcast medium, simultaneously local and global in nature and almost free (relatively).

Why and for what purpose was it created?

The purpose of any creation, including the Internet, can be deduced by understanding the environmental and social circumstances and the needs of its creator as perceived by her or himself. By that reasoning, we have to look at the backdrop against which the Internet materialised.

Brief Background

The basic concept of the Internet comes out of the realisation by Global Europe (White people) that the most important consideration above any other in any society is secure, efficient communication of information. The controllers in America recognised that their security could be up the creek if a leader on either side of the "iron curtain" took the phoney East/West "cold war" confidence trick too seriously (see Towards 2000) and started a real shooting match.

Being aware of the duplicitous nature of their European "kith and kin" and remembering their most recent internecine wars, the Americans devised a plan whereby the hitherto centralised communication control system would be decentralised in a flexible, national network. In this way the military and political command structure could be maintained in the event of an actual crisis, even where the majority of its communication components may be destroyed or otherwise neutralised by enemy action. This government-sponsored project under the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) became known as ARPANet, a communications network of interconnected computers independent of any single command point.

This network idea was later adapted by higher education institutions, some of whose research graduates were responsible for its creation and development on behalf of the government. As more and more people became aware of the idea and its application, it gradually drifted into the non-military, non-academic public domain, where multinational corporations who were developing their own networks found it expedient to use "the Net", as it became known, as an integral part of their global communications system.

The invention of the World Wide Web in Switzerland, with its hyper text markup language (HTML) script gave the Internet colour, graphics and motion capabilities. The Web on the Net soon captured the imagination of sales and marketing gurus of global commerce. They saw the Internet with its enormous, actively receptive clientele as a potentially lucrative market place, not just for computer hardware and software companies who were already making huge sums of money. The problem remains for them, how to make it more "secure" and less of a free-for-all environment.

So we see that the purpose of the Internet, as created and maintained by Global Europe is to help them consolidate and maintain their global domination.

What relevance is the Internet to Global Africa?

The question of the Internet's relevance to Global Africa caries within it several negative Eurocentric assumptions about Africa, African people, our relationship to technology and our need for and ability to create and use information. Yet this question is most often asked of me by "intelligent", "educated", "aware" African individuals who, rightfully, see the Internet as just another European creation. They therefore expect to see and subsequently experience it being used in no other way than as a Global European tool of oppression.

But these same Brothers and Sisters will never think to ask: "What relevance is Agriculture or Astrology or Mathematics or Medicine or Philosophy or Religion or any of the other scientific creations of the African to Global Europe?"

It is to do with us. Our Role and Contribution.

We have had and still do have many notable scholars, scientists, inventors and researchers at the cutting edge of modern day high technology (see references). Since the days of the mainframe computer and punch card programming, when a programmers job was tedious, time consuming, unfashionable and dreadfully low paid, many African men have been pioneers in the field. Yet today, as a people we remain a techno-phobic community. How is it that the people who gave technology to the world have come to regard themselves generally as mere consumers within a technologically advanced society and poor beggars outside of it?

It is because we are locked into a negative mind-set based partly on the lie that Africans have never created anything of worth (see Gobineau). It is also based on the fact that there is a war going on and although most of us can feel the effect of it, few of us recognise that we are living in a state of war, while the majority believe we are the lucky beneficiaries of progressive European inventiveness. This negative mentality on one side says: "Everything the European creates is good for us," and on the other side declares that: "Everything they create is bad for us." Neither of which is true. No object is in and of itself essentially good or bad, regardless who invented it.

Our Dilemma

With that mentality, we see only two choices. Either way, the end result is our neutralisation.

1) We can fall in line with all those Global African "governments" (Caribbean included) and commercial institutions who believe or pretend that they have their own Internet presence but in reality are merely consumer clients, entirely under the control of Global European corporations (mainly Americans) who are their Internet Service Providers (ISP) and therefore have open access to every byte of information which is transmitted via their servers.

2) We can continue turning the blind eye to reality, as this free-interaction medium gets "regulated" by repressive, oppressive and exploitative laws in Global Europe's attempts to consolidate their stranglehold on global communications by formalising, monopolising, institutionalising, centralising and, where they deem necessary, criminalising the Internet.

So, how do we survive our conditioning, this double-edged dagger which causes us on the one hand to joyfully swallow the poisoned blade of consumerism just because the European offers it or on the other hand, to turn our backs and dismiss as deadly, everything they touch, including that which was originally created by us or belonged to us? How do we make it work for us?

The Solution. What we can do about the Internet.

A knife is not necessarily a weapon. It is the user of the knife who defines its purpose. The fact that your enemy creates a knife does not necessarily make it destructive to you or useless to you. The same principle applies to the Internet. We have to begin to see the Internet as a tool, nothing more, nothing less. A very important tool which could be used in revolutionary and rewarding ways for the benefit of the world's population. But a tool nevertheless. As such, if it is to be of any value to us, whichever aspect of it we choose to use must be brought entirely under our control and suitably adapted to serve our purpose and aid in our quest for self-determination.

Can we afford it?

The Internet is relatively the cheapest global communication medium available and it's getting cheaper. Yet many among us believe we cannot afford it because it is to do with computers and high-tech components. But when you consider the amount of money we spend individually on cosmetics, tobacco, alcohol, clothes, ($200.00 trainers?) and some very expensive cars, it's hard to believe that we are poor. Even worse, the knowledge that around £50 million flows out of Africa each and every hour, resulting in a net outflow of billions of dollars of valuable resources, including people every year makes a mockery of the poverty-stricken image. Yes, we can afford it, if we see communication of information as one of our most fundamental human rights and social needs. If we see the need for our people to communicate freely with each other both globally and locally, we will afford it.

I have an idea that can make Internet facilities and its benefits available to every ordinary African person on the continent for less than is spent on controlling the population of Africa, the continent with the lowest population density anywhere in the world (see population control). It will cost far, far less than the annual cost of arming a medium sized African nation for suppression of its people.

The potential of the Internet (or something like it for Global Africa) is virtually limitless. For example, with the development of real-time audio/visual transmission, a lecturer or school teacher in West Africa would not have to leave their village haven to teach a class in East Africa or West London and West Los Angeles and a million other locations simultaneously, and they would also have multiparty online interaction between teacher and students and students.

The technology by which the Internet and the thousands of other communications networks in operation function is also a tool. A tool which can be further developed by Global Africans to create our own global multimedia communications networks independent of any external control or influence. What is important in that equation is the human touch. We must never lose sight of the need to extend ourselves to each other, to reach out and make the human connection. In all our relationships it is the human touch, that feeling of oneness, of being, of belonging, which makes the connection work. Self-determination presupposes the recognition of the existence of self.

Our enemies know that whether in a state of war or in a time of peace, who controls the information determines the outcome. Since knowledge of self is the key to life, those without such knowledge, have no hope of living. We want to live. We have to live. For the sake of humanity, we must live. The knife will not cut the hand holding its handle. So it is our duty to grab the Internet by the handle and make good use of it. We have the power. We are the power. Let us use the power.

References

http://www.users.fast.net/~blc/xlhome2.htm

Stewart, Marvin Charles. Arithmetic Unit for Digital Computers, U.S. Patent 3,395,271, July 30, 1968; System for Interconnecting Electrical Components, U.S. Patent 3,605,063, Sept. 14, 1971.

Blacks in Science by Ivan Van Sertima,

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Bibliography/African_Origins_Math.html

http://www.lib.lsu.edu/lib/chem/display/sources.html

Gobineau in Banton,M., Racial Theories, Cambridge University Press, 1987 p48