Max E. Lambie, Contributor
AFTER YEARS of applying just lip-service to the desire to develop technological skills in Jamaica, it is quite evident that the national leadership is now intensely serious about it.
As proof, Prime Minister P.J. Patterson recently proposed to the G-15 summit that "there were constant reminders that technology advances can yield." Making the point relative to the emerging countries, he also made a plea for the developed countries to assist developing countries to make our way". Though the point could have been more precisely defined, it is true that the aid programmes of the international agencies has contained little about technological development or cross over from the richer countries.
Realistically, however, the emerging countries will have decades to wait if it expects to obtain meaningful technological programmes from the international agencies. The industrial countries who fund the international agencies would never permit the increase of more competition from the emerging countries. China, India and Brazil have made tremendous inroads but has done it all on their own bootstraps. Israel is the only country that has received meaningful help through the sponsorship of the United States government.
Sure, emerging countries will be showed the hype that they should adopt information technology and hurry to get on the Internet. Out of that pabulum, also, developing countries will hear how each student should have access to computers and should know how to get onto the Internet. But what is just being realised in the United States is that 75 per cent of the time spent by children on the Internet is devoted to recreational activity rather than learning. In fact, an Investor Business Daily study conducted in Los Angeles reveals that Asian immigrants spend the least time on the Internet of any social/ethnic group. Yet, they score 20 per cent higher on SAT scores and comprise one-third of the entering class at highly-coveted Stanford and Caltech. The reason: Asians concentrate more on preparative foundation of the physical and mathematical sciences.
Social privilege
Similarly, the fact that citizens of Jamaica might be able to get on to the Internet does not mean that the country will benefit technologically anymore than having cable TV has contributed to the nurturing of making simple electronics such as calculators. Similarly, as a social privilege in a deregulated economy, Jamaicans have every right to make what Internet-advertised foreign purchases meet their fancy. But what widespread access to the Internet will mean to Jamaica is to induce locals to purchase foreign goods which will further increase the negative balance of payments. If Ocho Rios had, on the other hand, sufficient telephone lines that would permit operators of small facilities to advertise then information technology would make a competitive advantage. But such is not the case. Other than tourism, what is there from Jamaica to advertise on the Internet? As the Dell Computer ad on TV asks: "Everybody these days are offering e-business solutions, but have they spent the last five years as we have on technical research?
With a shaky foundation to build on Jamaica should introspectively examine itself why it has failed in attracting industrial investors or in incubating home-grown ventures. In agro-processing, why has Jamaica not been able to enter the lucrative market of bottling fruit juices as the Dominican Republic? Why has El Salvador been able to become the world's second producer of sweet pineapples that were cultured in Jamaica and earns them US$700-million in exports to the United States. Why has the Mexico City bottler Sandys become the largest producer of sorrel drinks that alone exceeds the total sales of local Desnoes & Geddes?
Or has any of Jamaica's vocal economists or sociologists conducted post-mortems as to why the country has not been able to hold the exit of lucrative investments that it had. Every time this writer drives past the rusted buckets on the abandoned ropeway at Lydford, St. Ann, for the next few hours the unanswerable question why this calamity happened elicits remorse in this writer's thinking. There is a Jamaican syndrome that places technical questions in the hands of economists and lawyers. This myopia goes back to the fiasco of the economically-crippling bauxite levy.
An influential Jamaican educator expressed his concern to this writer about how Jamaica can get into the global high-tech arena. This writer was tempted to ask why aim for the sky when we can't even get to the top of the mounds though it might be felt that I am being sarcastic. Meaning, Jamaica has not been successful in entering the global market for manufacturing systems and are using non-technical people to plan technological questions.
Did the Government listen to high-tech experts Doug Halsall or Jens Wynton when they advised, no pleaded, against purchasing the unfinished voter-registration system from TRW Inc of the U.S.? Did the Government's non-technical advisers who negotiated the agreement with Cable & Wireless (C&W) consult veteran computer expert Pat Terrelonge? No. Instead, Terrelonge was persecuted by C&W as the reward for his entrepreneurial venture into the Internet provider market. Nor did anyone protest on his behalf or express concern about the conflict-of- interest appearance that the chief executive of C&W was also the husband of a Cabinet Minister?
Technical experts
How many real technical experts does the Scientific Research Council, Office of Utilities Regulation or JAMPRO who are graduate electronic engineers from a reputable university have on their staff? Jamaica is yet to realise that the bureaucratic and cronyism-culture are the only hindrances to the acquisition of technological knowledge?
In this place, there are too many false prophets masquerading as IT experts who have never had a course in electronic or programming technology and who do not know the difference between a diode and a multiplexor. Nor are they the passionate, hard-working and wide-reading professionals that the technological culture demands. But there are many Jamaicans abroad who are technologically competent. Nor have U.S.-Jamaicans been as fortunate as the immigrants from India and Formosa becoming millionaires or having their own start-ups in Silicon Valley as Jerry Yang's 'Yahoo Inc' or Suresh Nihalani's 'Accelerated Networks'.
As Formosa has done, those migrants who aspire to do their own thing should be invited to return. But lip service alone will not do it. High-tech professionals are driven only by self-interest. Vague promises will not do.
Jamaica has to lay out funds as they will be doing in funding the US$3.4 million entrepreneurial centre at UTech. How many entrepreneurs have they initiated? Does UTech have an electronic laboratory or a machine for experimenting with the etching of semi-conductor chips? Sure, UTech has a sculpture park but should not that be placed in Hope Gardens instead? Our priorities are skewed. Jamaica should self-motivate its switch to a high tech culture by getting professionals at the leadership of the effort. It does not require the government bureaucrats - international or local.
Hence, help does not have to come from the international agencies. The development requires a more practical plan that is outside of the government bureaucracy. For example, the money to be spent on expanding the UTech entrepreneurial centre could better have been spent on funding a research centre run by professionals.
The success of the high-tech promotion model of Austin, Texas, for example, is based on placing electronic and software professors in charge of the programmes minus bureaucrats or politicians. But such suggestions might sound like heresy in Jamaica. In that case, qualified Jamaicans will join the line heading to Cupertino, California.
Who can blame them?
