Onemanbandwidth reports that Dell has plans to market a super cheap computer for countries with massive populations like China, India and Brazil.
Dell’s “EC280″ model is looking to cash in on volume demand in the world’s second largest market and beyond. Smart thinking. It is good to see the West adapting to the China market instead of floundering like Google, Yahoo and others have done here using strategies unattractive to the Chinese. The Internet in China may well be the last real entrepreneurial frontier for a while
Back in December in my post déjà vu I speculated that half of the Chinese population would connect to the web, representing 35% of all users. With cheap hardware and creative financing deals the target seems a lot closer.
Of course it will be interesting to see what influence such a large user base will have on the types of applications that become popular. We can’t just assume that the needs of this segment will be the same of the Occidental web user.
If the post a brighter future revealed the possible destinations for the masses of migrants moving around the planet, this image from Natural Resources Conservation Service within the United States Department of Agriculture may tell us where they come from. A global population density map represents the number of people per square kilometer around the globe.
While the map confirms what we’ve known for a while about India and China, it highlights some other countries that we don’t hear too often such as Bangladesh and Indonesia.
For the hard figures, check the list of countries by population.
I’ve found many ways of pointing the finger to global corporations for the displacement of humans, based mostly on the premise that globalization has shifted human activity to those hubs where it is cheaper. But in the game of crisis-induced migrations, globalization may have found its match: global warming. We should start to consider the demographic changes ahead of us.
Hearing about it all over the news is one thing, but experiencing it first hand is a real wake-up call: I’ve lived in Canada for the past 9 years and during that time I have see the usual cruel winter days, but I’ve also seen some unbelievable days of +10¬∞C right in the middle of the season (when it should be -10¬∞C!). An event like this is hard to forget and they say most people have fond memories of one of such days when nature shared a little smile to keep them going. People remember because this is not supposed to happen more than a few times in a life time. So what do you do when this becomes the norm? In what could’ve been an omen, we celebrated the first day of 2007 by walking in the park in a +12¬∞C sunny day. The most disturbing fact is that according to the official report the average increase in temperature during the last 9 winter seasons has only been 2.1¬∞C.
This gives us a bit of perspective on what a 2.0 – 5.4 ¬∞C likely range of Temperature Change will do this century. This according to the recently released IPCC 4th Assessment Report. Statistics are kind of evil that way: an average can hide a lot of peaks, so don’t be too optimistic about just a few degrees warmer.
What caught my attention in this table was the definition of each scenario (from best to worse):
- B1: a convergent world with rapid change in economic structures towards a service and information economy, with reductions in material intensity and the introduction of clean and resource efficient technologies. The emphasis is on global solutions to economic, social and environmental sustainability, including improved equity, but without additional climate initiatives.
- A1T: a world of very rapid economic growth with rapid introduction of new and more efficient technologies with emphasis on non-fossil energy sources. Major underlying themes are convergence among regions, capacity building and increased cultural and social interactions, with a substantial reduction in regional differences in per capita income.
- B2: a world in which the emphasis is on local solutions to economic, social and environmental sustainability. It is a world with continuously increasing global population, at a rate lower than A2, intermediate levels of economic development, and less rapid and more diverse technological change than in the B1 and A1 storylines. While the scenario is also oriented towards environmental protection and social equity, it focuses on local and regional levels.
- A1B: same as A1T, but with a balance in the various energy sources.
- A2: a very heterogeneous world. The underlying theme is self reliance and preservation of local identities. Fertility patterns across regions converge very slowly, which results in continuously increasing population. Economic development is primarily regionally oriented and per capita economic growth and technological change more fragmented and slower than other storylines.
- A1FI: same as A1T, but with an emphasis on fossil intensive technologies.
Franke James has a visual essay on how deep the impact of Global Warming will be for Canada, elaborating on a quote by Steven Levitt (from Freakonomics) about how “good” it could be. It captures both the frustration of having to deal with the nuisances of changing weather patterns and the disruption they cause to our little traditions; and to live in an apathetic society that will need a LOT MORE than a few warm days to react.
Aside from confirming global warming, the IPCC report concludes that failing to create a global culture that favors social and environmental sustainability and an economy based on service and information technologies is almost as bad as our suicidal race on fossil intensive technologies. A real solution will need a lot more than taxing polluting industries and blaming corporations.
It sounds to me that now more than ever there is a strong case to continue the discussion about a global culture that makes possible the propagation of core principles aimed at the long term goals outlined above. Many of the ideas exist already in privileged circles, but an important degree of participation is required to make those ideas widespread. I’m certain apathy of the general public will be as bad as the negligence of a few bad corporations.
Yesterday I got a call from To√±o, one of many Mexicans that have come to Canada looking for better opportunities. He is young but his voice conveys a very calm attitude, almost zen-like. He has completed engineering studies back home, but the lack of local acreditations have him working as cheap labour. He is in survival mode and as such is likely willing to try almost anything. I worry that if I can’t help, someone will take advantage of his situation.
He is likely going to be one of the first candidates to participate in a blogging workshop that will allow him to explore new ventures by teaching him basic skills. While I know it is unlikely that anybody will make enough money through blogging, specially at an amateur level, the essential lesson is that people coming from remote corners of the world to the big cities should not dismiss their cultural baggage, and instead should take advantage of the wealth of knowledge. Blogging is just the mechanism to make them realize their potential.
A few months ago, I posted think culturati, an early attempt to describe what this blog was all about. The idea has evolved in directions I didn’t expect, but at the core I believe the principle of bringing the conversation of this blog to tangible results continues to be important. At the time I was spending a lot of time working with Wikipedia, so it seemed a good idea to use the army of migrant bloggers to produce information useful for bridging cultures. Today, I’m a little bit less concerned about structuring information and more about helping raise awareness to the issue of migrants shaping Global Culture.
So far this initiative is running out of my own pockets, and I expect to be able to take it much farther on my own, but if you have any ideas on how to organize a blogging workshop in the Toronto area (space, rentals, tools, volunteers, grants), please drop me a line as the first one is likely going to take place within the next couple of months. Even better, if you know anyone who would be good candidate to participate, send them my way.
According to Dale Dougherty from the O’Reilly Radar those were the words of Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child, a non-profit association dedicated to research and develop a $100 laptop. He was responding to the question “Do you have to be American to be good?” asked by moderator Martin Varsavsky at the DLD conference:
First of all, I was in Boston 10 days last year, I carry an EU passport, I did half my education in Europe and my family is 100% European. Yes, I did study at MIT and spent a good portion of my life there. But I don’t think of myself as a citizen of any country at all. I have no nation. I think nationalism is a disease and it’s a disease that has really hurt the world.
You can watch the video of the panel How to be good? and forward to marker 26′50″, read the brief account from Dale Dougherty or get the first person account from Martin himself. In any case, I was happy enough to pick the quote above for this post.
With the sudden celebrity status that comes with being nominated for the bloggies, I’ve been playing defense when it comes to my motives for writing this blog. I’ve also been asked many times why would I write in English as opposed to Spanish which is my mother tongue. In fact, I am very conscious about trying to be a voice for the millions of migrants around the world that have been displaced by globalization, but at the same time I try not to fall into the trap of creating hatred against the life style that has made it possible for me to engage in this experience. You see, living in Canada with all the perks that the developed world offers, is what has given me the opportunity to devote a large number of hours to an activity that otherwise it would’ve seen too complicated to tackle. My years in Mexico were great, but were mostly about survival in the sense that there was little time for any activities that would not contribute directly to advancing as an individual. The migrant experience taught me two things: 1) the survival skills are very useful when faced with the challenge of starting from zero in a new country; 2) there is more to life than surviving, but all those things will only appear once you have the basics under control.
Going back to the panel, I believe there is a strong correlation between being a citizen in the developed world and wanting to do good. The reason is simple: if you have elevated your life-style above the basic survival game (often called the rat race) a whole range of opportunities become possible. As I’ve mentioned in the about page, entertainment with capital “E” goes far beyond having fun. It is a whole new life style that more and more people can afford to have.
The debate on national identities has become obsolete. With a whole legion of migrants making their way in the developed world, taking control of their lives and using their newfound energy to focus on their preferred enterprises there is a very powerful mechanism for spreading the ideas that matter, whether they were born out of their original cultures or were bred by the special circumstances of their journey. It shouldn’t matter if I’m Mexican or live in Canada, as long as the net result of my journey has a positive effect to both cultures.
A very detailed portrait of a typical middle-class chinese family serves as the background for the story The New Superpower: China’s Emerging Middle Class by Noreen O’Leary in a recent issue of Adweek Magazine. The story, intended for an audience fascinated with marketing strategies, is full of success stories of global brands making their way into the chinese market place. But it provides a lot more insight into the mindset of a new generation of consumers than other articles I’ve read recently. It is as if this new generation of chinese consumers is defined by the products they buy.
While I had provided a brief snapshot of the massive changes underway in countries like China, understanding how the social unit (the family) thinks reveals a lot more about their future than those statistics. The subject of this article is a family which does really well compared with the 3/4 of the population living in poverty but is still considered lower-middle-class with an:
annual household income equals about $26,700 a year. Much of that comes from Bin, 30, who earns 10,000 yuan ($1,280) a month in his shift job as a supervisor at car manufacturer Volkswagen; his wife earns about 5,500 yuan ($690) monthly in her IT job, including her Internet business, and her parents receive a combined 2,000 yuan ($256) in (pension) money a month. (It is the children’s obligation to support the parents, hence the Chinese three-generation social unit. However, the grandparents in this household tend to lavish much of their stipend on their “Little Emperor” grandson.) Their monthly expenses include $260 in mortgage payments and about $130 on food.
This type of families is the result of not more than 30 years of fundamental changes to their society which have enabled capitalism to flourish in a way that would be the envy of western societies. Not only they are catching up to the race and living up to the stereotype of a consumist society, this newly found middle class is not afraid to live large and understands its role in creating a powerful nation:
“Of course our life is not traditional Chinese, like my parents who worked hard and saved money. Unlike my parents who make plans for the future, we can’t plan because we have no savings. Life is a short time. I have the energy to make money and … I want to enjoy life and take good care of that time to have a better life,” she says. She expects the same for her son: “He will be even more happy than my generation because, like us, he can have whatever he wants.” Her father may not agree with his daughter’s free-spending ways, but understands and accepts it. When Deng declared “to get rich is glorious,” it was a call to action for individual Chinese to earn and spend for the greater good of China‚Äîan admonition not lost on the family patriarch. “[My children's] biggest weakness is that they don’t prepare for the future. If they use up all their money, what do they do after they age?” asks Yu Sheng. “But I am not worried about their values. Their behavior is better for the country because if they spend the money, the Chinese economy grows.”
This kind of cultural reprogramming may be the most powerful weapon of the chinese government. To be able to transform the mindset of the bulk of the population in just two generations is likely more impressive than being able to attract foreign investment.
With a strong family ethic that mandates couples to assume responsibility for their elders, they may have found the cure for the usual anxiety of planning for retirement, which is very common in our western societies. And with a large portion of these families having only one child, it is not difficult to imagine how spoiled that kid will be, conditioning this new generation for the virtues of capitalism.
Although their buying power may be limited with such income, China expects to have more than half a billion people as part of their middle-class over the next 3 or 4 decades. Such an army of devoted consumers will have drastic consequences around the globe, but the most important effect will result from their ability to remain strong to a millenia of traditions so as they find their way into the global market place, their core values and cultural preferences permeate the very same societies that are drooling for their business. Two generations have been suficient to catch up with the rest of the world, one more will be decisive in their quest for cultural survival.
Globalization is likely one of those words that must appear in newspapers every day. But the recent post about an article canadians & globalization got me thinking about doing a little historical research of my own: browsing through the digital archive of the Toronto Star (Canada), I found the first use of “globalization” was in the Sunday edition of May 20, 1984.
From a conversation with then Harvard professor Kenneth Goodpaster “There is a globalization of business” was the quote used in the article. This in the context of a discussion about the ethics that business must adhere to specially in an increasingly global economy. You have to admit that it is a bit ironic that the first reference I found deals with ethical problems such as worker’s rights, the rights of citizens in other countries and the rights of the environment. I guess it wasn’t hard to forecast the sort of damage that uncontrolled businesses could do if left unchecked.
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