Our Common Humanity in the Information Age. Principles and Values for Development

THOUGHTS ON EQUALITY
Stacey Roussel, Youth Representative, Young Professionals for 
International Cooperation, The SAVITA Society
No individual and no nation must be denied the opportunity to benefit from development. 
The equal rights and opportunities of women and men must be assured.
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The Millennium Declaration, unanimously signed by the member states of the United 
Nations (UN) in 2000, put forth six universal values: freedom, tolerance, sustainable 
development, solidarity, shared responsibility and equality. From these values the 
Millennium Development Goals (MDG) were created to give direction and hope to the 
international community. While these values and goals were being proclaimed, the world 
of technology was quietly but profoundly changing the way we communicate, work, 
build communities and ultimately go about the work of self reali zation. These powerful 
tools, information and communication technologies (ICT), are playing an ever 
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http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm

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increasingly important role in accomplishing the MDGs and strengthening the values laid 
out in the Millennium Declaration. Technology is playing an especially intriguing role in 
advancing the value of equality.
The Millennium Declaration defines the value of equality to include “no individual and 
no nation must be denied the opportunity to benefit from development.” In his book, The 
World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
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, Thomas Friedman made 
startlingly clear the role of technology in leveling the playing field for an unprecedented 
number of people around the world. Personal computers, fiber optic cable, cell phones, 
outsourcing and off shoring, and “informing” technologies like Google are providing an 
entrée to individuals, regardless of nationality, to “benefit from development” by 
providing jobs, increased connectivity to the world around them, and a platform for inter-
action.
Technology has a multiplying power. Where one analog television signal used to reach a 
broadcast area, now three digital channels are multicasting with bandwidth to spare. 
Website have become multi media platforms and television stations are media centers 
where the evening news broadcast is secondary to the accompanying pod casting, 
blogging, and interactive forums.
Perhaps one of the greatest economic equalizers or flatteners providing access to the 
‘benefits of development’ has been the scary business of outsourcing. Scary because it 
means facing the unknown for workers in developed countries and sharing what is too 
often perceived as a limited resource, jobs, with workers in developing countries. For all 
of its possible benefits, outsourcing is of course not in itself the solution to poverty or the 
answer to our question of equality. It falls short. The solution lies deeper. It lies in letting 
go of seeing our fate as separate from everyone else’s. We must internalize Mahatma 
Gandhi’s saying that, “No one is free when others are oppressed.” Until we as a human 
race realize this interconnectedness, we will simply repeat the mistakes of the past.
As we go about advancing the cause of equality through the use and dissemination of 
ICTs, we must be mindful of their limitations and resist the temptation to see them as the 
savior. ICTs are tools. Their effects on our lives are not unanimously positive. A recent 
special on PBS’ Frontline investigated the personal and cultural pressures experienced by 
the young women working in India's call centers as they try to balance their traditional 
roles with an increasingly "western" or "modern" experience. In addition to working 
toward true equality and not simply adding a job onto an unchanged tradition role, we 
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Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Expanded and Updated edition; April 18, 2006

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Chapter IV – Equality and Opportunity | 87 
must be careful not to allow the proliferation of ICTs and globalization to white wash our 
traditions or simply make our lives so busy we lose sight of reality.
Another important thing to remember about ICTs in the pursuit of equality is that they are 
not yet ubiquitous. Not everyone has access to personal computers, free and uncensored 
information, outsourced tech jobs and cell phones. People continue to die from hunger, 
curable diseases, and many of the other scourges of poverty. The question of poverty and 
providing equal opportunity to participate in development is a moral question as well as a 
logistical one. This is where the social entrepreneurs enter the scene - those who would 
endeavor to create social capital as well as monetary capital through their efforts to save 
the world.
Venture philanthropy, social entrepreneur, and volunteer tourism are just a few of the 
solutions that have grown up in the ‘third’ or non profit sector to answer the question of 
equality of opportunity. While business has been busy outs ourcing, off shoring and 
wiring the world, non governmental organizations like the Grameen Bank have been busy 
creating opportunities for individuals to prosper and perhaps take advantage of this new 
connectedness. In 1976, Dr. Muhammad Yunus founded the Grameen Bank and loaned a 
total of $27 to a handful of women in a village outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh. As the 
loans were paid back, the project grew, and as more money was lent to more women for 
entrepreneurial ventures, the Bank began to expand its concept of poverty from simple 
monetary or ‘traditional’ poverty to include the more aloof problems of poverty like high 
birthrates, lack of education and poor healthcare. By including these issues in the 
program through a series of pledges the women make, the Grameen Bank ensured a 
deepening and longevity to their success that many projects only dream of 
accomplishing. The Grameen Bank included another ingenious aspect to their loans 
called group lending. By tying the success of each individual to the success of the group, 
the Grameen Bank understood the fundamental power of community. The Bank recently 
began using cell phones not only as its own enterprise, but to connect the women to the 
information and people they need to increase the success of their business es and their 
quality of life.
The more freedom, participation, connectedness and transparency a country possesses, 
the more prosperous it will be. When people are free, they are happier, more productive 
and more creative, and as they participate in the global economy, their country’s GDP 
will grow and along with it the hope of its people.
The youth and young professionals of today take for granted a level of interconnectivity 
and immediacy that is truly unprecedented. We expect a world of opportunity – not just 

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for ourselves, but for our bothers and sisters who are working in outsourcing, the women 
and children in villages we have not yet met. We expect to be able to make a meaningful 
difference in the world within out lifetime through the multiplying power of technology. 
We hear about the income gap ever widening, yet simultaneously a global consciousness 
seems to be growing about the plight of the poor, begging a moral question of individual 
responsibility. Just as technology allows an individual unprecedented access to the global 
playing field, it also sets the standard for individual action for the global good, a good 
that is not achievable without equality.
If we do not harness the enthusiasm within today’s youth for equality of opportunity and 
women’s empowerment and the vast potential information and communication 
technologies bring, then we will have missed our common humanity.

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