A great deal of attention is being paid today to the so-called digital divide—the division of the world into the info(information) rich and the info poor. And that divide does exist today. My wife and I lectured about this looming danger twenty years ago. What was less visible then, however, were the new, positive forces that work against the digital divide. There are reasons to be optimistic.

There are technological reasons to hope the digital divide will narrow. As the Internet becomes more and more commercialized, it is in the interest of business to universalize access—after all, the more people online, the more potential customers there are. More and more governments, afraid their countries will be left behind, want to spread Internet access. Within the next decade or two, one to two billion people on the planet will be netted together. As a result, I now believe the digital divide will narrow rather than widen in the years ahead. And that is very good news because the Internet may well be the most powerful tool for combating world poverty that we've ever had.

Of course, the use of the Internet isn't the only way to defeat poverty. And the Internet is not the only tool we have. But it has enormous potential.

To take advantage of this tool, some impoverished countries will have to get over their outdated anti-colonial prejudices with respect to foreign investment. Countries that still think foreign investment is an invasion of their sovereignty might well study the history of infrastructure (the basic structural foundations of a society) in the United States. When the United States built its industrials infrastructure, it didn't have the capital to do so. And that is why America's Second Wave infrastructure—including roads, barbors, highways, ports and so on—were built with foreign investment. The English, the Germans, the Dutch and the French were investing in Britain's former colony. They financed them. Immigrant Americans built them. Guess who owns them now? The Americans. I believe the same thing would be true in places like Brazil or anywhere else for that matter. The more foreign capital you have helping you build your Third Wave infrastructure, which today is an electronic infrastructure, the better off you're going to be. That doesn't mean lying down and becoming fooled, or letting foreign corporations run uncontrolled. But it does mean recognizing how important they can be in building the energy and telecom infrastructures needed to take full advantage of the Internet.

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今天，人們十分關(guān)注所謂的數(shù)字鴻溝問題，即世界被分為信息資源豐富區(qū)和信息資源貧乏區(qū)兩類。這個(gè)鴻溝今天確實(shí)存在，我和我妻子20年前談過這個(gè)隱伏的危險(xiǎn)。然而，那時(shí)一些抵制數(shù)字鴻溝的、新的積極因素還不如今天明顯。我們是有理由感到樂觀的。

一些技術(shù)上的因素使我們有理由希望鴻溝會(huì)縮小。隨著互聯(lián)網(wǎng)變得越來越商業(yè)化，普及上網(wǎng)對(duì)商家是有利的——畢竟，上網(wǎng)人數(shù)越多，潛在的客戶就越多。越來越多的政府，由于擔(dān)心自己的國(guó)家會(huì)落后，都想推廣互聯(lián)網(wǎng)。一二十年之內(nèi)，全球?qū)⒂幸欢�十億人被網(wǎng)在一起。因此，我現(xiàn)在相信，在將來，數(shù)字鴻溝將會(huì)縮小而不是擴(kuò)大。這是非常好的消息，因?yàn)榛ヂ?lián)網(wǎng)非�？赡艹蔀槲覀兿�除所面臨的貧困的比較強(qiáng)有效的工具。

當(dāng)然，使用互聯(lián)網(wǎng)不是唯一戰(zhàn)勝貧困的方法。互聯(lián)網(wǎng)也不是我們所擁有的唯一工具，但它卻有巨大的潛力。

要想利用互聯(lián)網(wǎng)這個(gè)工具，某些貧困國(guó)家必須克服在外國(guó)投資方面的過時(shí)的反殖民偏見。那些認(rèn)為外國(guó)投資是對(duì)本國(guó)主權(quán)的侵犯的國(guó)家比較好還是研究一下美國(guó)基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施(社會(huì)的基本結(jié)構(gòu)基礎(chǔ))的歷史。當(dāng)初美國(guó)建設(shè)自己的工業(yè)基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施時(shí)，缺乏資金，這就是為什么美國(guó)的第二波基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施建設(shè)——包括公路、港口，高速公路、港口城市等等——都是利用的國(guó)外資金。英國(guó)人、德國(guó)人、荷蘭人和法國(guó)人都在這片前英國(guó)殖民地投資。他們提供資金，美國(guó)移民建造。想想看，現(xiàn)在誰(shuí)擁有這一切？美國(guó)人。我想，同樣的事情也可以發(fā)生在巴西或其他任何地方。你擁有的去建造第三次浪潮基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施(今天主要指電子基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施)的外國(guó)資金越多，那么你就越富裕。這并不是說卑躬屈膝，任人愚弄，也不是讓外國(guó)公司為所欲為。但這的確意味著你已認(rèn)識(shí)到外國(guó)公司對(duì)本國(guó)能源及通信基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施建設(shè)的重要性，這些基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施是充分利用互聯(lián)網(wǎng)所必要的。