Dr. Arnoldo Ventura, Contributor

Left: Students work on their laptops on the first day of school at the 'School of the Future' in Philadelphia. The School District of Philadelphia opened a state-of-the-art high school boasting cutting edge technology, laptops and workstations for all students, and environmentally friendly features to reduce energy costs.   Right: Ugandan internal displaced child Christopher Oleke, who is malnourished, is fed at Adwari Corner camp in Otuke county of Lira district, Uganda. - REUTERS

As science marches forward, it creates as many questions as it provides answers, and likewise, the technologies it spawns cut in both positive and negative directions, depending on how they are applied and the situations, histories and cultures in which they are executed, as well as the reasons for their applications.

Nevertheless, science has powerful cultural effects, which are demonstrated in the fact that societies that have embraced science have a remarkable confidence to resort to reason to solve problems. An analogous effect is also seen at the individual level, where students that are engaged in its study, find more ease with other subjects.

Science and Technology Contributions to Poverty

Science is a contributor to poverty, as it is a tool for ameliorating many of its ills.

Most countries, before the arrival of science, were adjudged to be about on the same technological and economic levels, with the larger and older societies of the Arabia, China, and India, showing a slight advantage. The spread of science however changed this, as out of its origins in Britain, it placed Europe on a new development trajectory of industrialisation and accelerated economic growth. Such advancements later reached the USA, and then Japan and East Asia. These countries were able to elevate their living standards and reduce much of their grinding poverty. But their colonies, and other countries, which were not imbued with the same levels of S&T integration into socio-economic activities, not only remained socio-economically stagnant, but also witnessed decided increases in poverty and political impotence.

In other words, recognisable S&T gaps emerged between the rich and the poor, within and among nations, which reflected itself in sharp socio-economic divisions. These divisions were further widened by the spread of globalization, which is being accelerated by the ubiquitous improvements in communication and transportation technologies. Literally, the economies of many S&T backward countries, instead of gaining from the opening up of economies and the liberalisation of trade, have lost in many significant ways.

The globalization process has been enormously uneven and has manifestly widened the gap in global wealth and power. The share of the poorest twenty per cent of the world's population moved from 2.3 per cent in 1960 to 1.1per cent in 1987. The assets of the wealthiest three individuals in the world now exceed the combined Gross National Product (GNP) of forty-three least developed countries. As a matter of fact, the total income at the bottom forty-one per cent of the world's people is less than that reported by the two hundred wealthiest individuals.

Technological developments

On top of this, technological developments have occasioned a decline in commodity prices, on which the poor countries depend. In 1990, they were forty-five per cent lower than in 1980, and ten per cent lower than the lowest prices seen during the Great Depression of 1932.

This is accompanied by massive debts, which make the present situation very volatile. In 1997 the world's poorest countries alone owed $215 billion up from $183 billion in 1990, the consequence of which is that the poor presently are transferring some $230 billion to the rich each year, a most unsustainable situation.

This prompted the United Nations, in 1997, to say "In the past fifteen to twenty years more than 100 developing and transition countries have suffered disastrous failures in growth, and deeper more prolonged cuts in living standards, than anything experienced in the industrial countries during the Great Depression of the 1930s. As a result of those setbacks, the incomes of more than one billion people have fallen below levels first reached ten, twenty, or sometimes thirty, years ago."

Essentially, S&T, as they contribute to deepening poverty of many, also provide the tools for the rapidly increasing affluence of a few.

The decline of the quality of life that accompanies these figures expresses itself in shorter life spans, as well as, political and economic marginalization, with an ethos of hopelessness, anger and violence, gripping many nations and spilling over into others.

Approximately 1.3 billion people live on the equivalent of US$1 per day, with almost the same number showing a lack of safe drinking water, a billion are illiterate, and some 840 million are chronically hungry and malnourished with 40,000 children dying each day. Essentially, over some eight per cent of the world live on about fifteen per cent of the world's total GNP. These figures indicate that nearly 4 billion people live on a per capita income of little over US$2 per day.

So, side by side with a period of the fastest S&T progress is the largest number of people locked in poverty the world has ever seen. In essence, an ageing wealthy twenty per cent of the world with the might of technology sits opposite a majority that is relatively young, aware, and angry. A potent mix if you will. Technological knowledge and ease of use will not permit this to continue for much longer without growing discontent and possible confrontation.