By Ida Miro Kiss

Hungarian activitst, Ida Miro Kiss, comments on the need for social impact assessments of emerging information technologies in developing countries.

While in some parts of the world multimedia is chic, in other parts of the planet ABC books are missing. Can distance education through Internet replace teachers and books? Imagine that World Bank gives a loan to equip some hundred of villages lets say, in India with computers and Internet access - what will happen? Will not become this a case of electronic powder-milk? (You remember that some decades ago the Western helpers supplied third world women with powder-milk to fight famine and child mortality - the result was disastrous. As pure water was missing, mothers mixed the milk powder with infected water... the rest you can imagine.)

When we speak about the right to access, we should not forget about the aim and the impacts. How distance education affects teachers in the labour market? When the hypothetical project of supplying communities with modern informational technologies is over, who will pay the maintenance? The phone bills? And, when the equipment would become outdated, who will give money to buy new ones? The state or local authorities? If so, from where will they take away that money? From other sections of the education budget?

Such projects (if there exist any) are not resembling the first period of the introduction of drugs in a new market, where drugs are first free or cheap, and, when the addiction is achieved, the price is raised?

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