emeagwali - Blogs - TheBlackList Pub2024-03-29T06:48:02Zhttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/emeagwaliAround the Globe, Technology Widens Rich-Poor Gaphttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/around-the-globe-technology2009-02-02T00:38:17.000Z2009-02-02T00:38:17.000ZTheBlackListhttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/TheBlackList<div><a href="http://www.emeagwali.com">Philip Emeagwali:</a>
Oil has made us billions and fuelled our economic stability, but oil has also become the bane of our existence. For some, it is a curse that has caused poverty and corruption, but for others it is an essential source of untold wealth and power. But as the gap between rich and poor countries continues to expand, it is clear that intellectual capital and technology rule the world, and that natural resources such as oil, gold, and diamonds are no longer the primary determinants of wealth.
Surprisingly, nations with few natural resources demonstrate greater economic growth rates than OPEC countries. Japan’s economic growth, driven by technological superiority, outpaces that of Saudi Arabia; South Korea is growing faster than oil-rich Nigeria; and Taiwan’s economy has moved well beyond that of oil-rich Venezuela. The United States and Norway are also rich in oil, yet their staggering economic growth comes from intellectual capital.
In reality, it is not money but intellectual capital that drives prosperity. More important, perhaps, is the reality that poverty is driven and sustained by a lack of intellectual capital. The intimate relationship between intellectual capital and economic growth is as old as humanity itself, and is well illustrated by this parable from ancient Babylon (modern-day Iraq). A man asked his children:
<i>“If you had a choice between the clay of wisdom or a bag of gold, which would you choose?” “The bag of gold, the bag of gold” the naïve children cried, not realizing that wisdom had the potential to earn them many more bags of gold in the future.</i>
Seven thousand years later, Iraq — the cradle of civilization — has its own private bag of gold as it sits perched atop the world’s third largest oil reserves. Meanwhile, Israel, tucked away in the hostile terrain of a barren desert, has the clay of wisdom — the weightless wealth of intellectual capital embodied in the collective mind of its people.
The striking economic gap that persists between rich and poor nations has increased sevenfold over the past century to what is now an all-time high. The accumulation of intellectual capital by rich nations has helped broaden this gap because it has enabled them to control technology and collect hidden taxes from less affluent nations. For instance, Nigeria pays a 40-percent “royalty” tax on its petroleum revenues to foreign oil companies that are ripping out its family jewels — the huge store of wealth in its oilfields. These oilfields started forming when prehistoric, dog-sized humans — our common ancestor with the apes — walked African grasslands on four legs.
It’s a shocking reality, but the deep oil reserves laid down by Mother Nature millions of years ago and nurtured through the millennia in Africa have been whittled away within decades. And, for the dubious privilege of surrendering its natural resources forever, Nigeria is required to pay half its petroleum revenue in the form of “royalties” to the rich kids on the global block, the United States and the Netherlands. That oilfield has been exchanged for a bowl of porridge, and the black gold that should serve the underserved in Nigeria is helping wealthy Westerners get wealthier.
Today, half the world’s population — three billion people — live on an average of $500 a year. In contrast, Bill Gates earns $500 every second. By controlling technology and taxing computer users, Gates has become wealthier than each of the 70 poorest nations on earth and using his financial might has conquered more territory than Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great combined.
While Bill Gates is the new millennium’s Prince of Technology, he is by no means the first to have taken on the huge potential offered by the realm of technology. The Romans used roads and military technology to expand their empire. And, for centuries, Britain ruled a quarter of the Earth due to its unparalleled ability to command maritime technology and conquer the Seven Seas.
Britain undoubtedly established itself as the world’s first superpower through its rapid and ruthless colonial expansion program. The British raised the Union Jack over Canada and Australia, India and Hong Kong, Egypt and Kenya, and countless other countries — even the United States. The Union Jack cast its shadow in every global time zone, giving rise to the saying, “The sun never sets on the British Empire,” a fact that was cold comfort to the colonized nations.
In the same way, the United States has embraced its technological supremacy, both offensively and defensively, to build its own global empire without a physical presence in any of its “colonies.” The sole remaining superpower is at the forefront of every major technological advancement, which it has used to become deeply embedded in three-quarters of the globe. The US has accomplished a virtual economic colonization manifesting its presence throughout the globe by harnessing the power of technology and capitalizing on its clay of wisdom.
Africa’s inability to realize its potential and embrace technology has left it at the mercy of the West. The time has come for Africa to seize the day and resist the efforts of America and others to leave their imprint and plunder its natural resources.
Numerous examples throughout history support the idea that technology can be used as a tool of oppression. And there’s little doubt that America’s technological advancement has allowed it to exploit natural resources around the world. This is particularly evident in Africa, where the US is exploiting oilfields beneath the pristine rainforest — and being rewarded with a 40-percent tax at the expense of the African people. This lends credence to history’s assertion that those who control technology oppress those who do not, eventually enslaving them and, finally, wielding power around the globe.
Transcribed from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DueTTHYPnM">speech</a> delivered by <a href="http://emeagwali.com">Philip Emeagwali</a> on April 4, 2008 at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia at the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. The entire transcript and <a href="http://youtube.com/emeagwali">video</a> are posted at <a href="http://emeagwali.com">emeagwali.com</a>.
<b>Philip Emeagwali was inducted into the gallery of <a href="http://emeagwali.com/africa/100-greatest-africans/historys-greatest-black-achievers.pdf">history's 70 greatest black achievers</a> by the International Slavery Museum and into the Gallery of Prominent Refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Philip Emeagwali has been called “a father of the Internet” by <a href="http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/fyi/interactive/specials/bhm/story/black.innovators.html#1">CNN</a> and <a href="http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/04.html">TIME</a>; praised as an “unorthodox innovator [who] has pushed back the boundaries of oilfield science” by a leading European oil and gas industry journal; extolled as “one of the great minds of the Information Age” by former US president <a href="http://emeagwali.com/video/president-bill-clinton/one-of-the-great-minds-of-the-information-age.wmv">Bill Clinton</a>, and voted history’s 35th greatest African by <a href="http://emeagwali.com/media/africa/greatest-africans-of-all-times.pdf">New African</a>. He won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, the Nobel Prize of supercomputing.</b>
# # #</div>An Open Letter to Martin Luther Kinghttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/an-open-letter-to-martin2009-01-18T03:17:12.000Z2009-01-18T03:17:12.000ZTheBlackListhttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/TheBlackList<div>by Philip Emeagwali
<a href="http://emeagwali.com">emeagwali.com</a>
Walk with me down memory lane. The time: 1968. In 30 months, one million dead. The setting: a dusty camp in Biafra where survivors waited and hoped for peace. The survivors: Refugees fleeing from the “Dance of Death.” My mentor: One of the refugee camp directors, whom I called “Teacher” out of respect.
“Martin Luther King has been killed,” Teacher said, with a pained voice and vacant eyes. I looked towards Teacher, wondering: “Who is Martin Luther King?” I was a 13-year-old refugee in the west African nation of Nigeria, a land then called Biafra. Martin Luther King. What did that name mean?
Eight out of ten Biafrans were refugees exiled from their own country. Two years earlier, Christian army officers had staged a bloody coup killing Muslim leaders. The Muslims felt the coup was a tribal mutiny of Christian Igbos against their beloved leaders. The aggrieved Muslims went on a killing rampage, chanting: “Igbo, Igbo, Igbo, you are no longer part of Nigeria!” In the days that followed, 50,000 Igbos were killed in street uprisings.
Killing was not new to us in Biafra. I was 13, but I knew much of killing. Widows and orphans were most of the refugees in our camp. They had survived the Igbo “Dance of Death” — a euphemism for the mass executions. One thousand men at gunpoint forced to dance a public dance. Seven hundred were then shot and buried en masse in shallow graves. When told to hurry up and return to his regular duty, one of the murderers said: “The graves are not yet full.”
A few days later, with only the clothes on our backs, we fled from this “Dance of Death.” That was six months before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Teacher and I were eventually conscripted into the Biafran army and sent to the front, two years after our escape.
After the war, Teacher – who had taught me the name of Martin Luther King — was among the one million who had died. I — a child soldier – was one of the fifteen million who survived.
Africa is committing suicide: a two-decade war in Sudan, genocidal killings in Rwanda, scorched-earth conflicts in Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, and Liberia. The wars in modern Africa are the largest global-scale loss of life since the establishment of the Atlantic Slave trade, which uprooted and scattered Africa’s sons and daughters across the United States, Jamaica, and Brazil.
Africa’s wars are steering the continent toward a sea of self-destruction so deep that even the greatest horror writers are unable to fathom its depths. So, given our circumstances, Martin Luther King was a name unknown, a dead man among millions, with a message that never reached the shores of Biafra.
Neither did his message reach the ears of “The Black Scorpion,” Benjamin Adekunle, a tough Nigerian army commander, whose credo of ethnic cleansing knew nothing of Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement: “We shoot at everything that moves, and when our forces move into Igbo territory, we even shoot things that do not move.”
As we heed Martin Luther King Jr.’s call, and march together across the world stage, let us never forget that we who have witnessed and survived the injustice of such nonsensical wars are the torchbearers of his legacy of peace for our world, our nation, and our children.
Transcribed from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DueTTHYPnM">speech</a> delivered by <a href="http://emeagwali.com">Philip Emeagwali</a> on April 4, 2008 at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia at the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. The entire transcript and <a href="http://youtube.com/emeagwali">video</a> are posted at <a href="http://emeagwali.com">emeagwali.com</a>.
<b>Philip Emeagwali was inducted into the gallery of <a href="http://emeagwali.com/africa/100-greatest-africans/historys-greatest-black-achievers.pdf">history's 70 greatest black achievers</a> by the International Slavery Museum and into the Gallery of Prominent Refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Philip Emeagwali has been called “a father of the Internet” by <a href="http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/fyi/interactive/specials/bhm/story/black.innovators.html#1">CNN</a> and <a href="http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/04.html">TIME</a>; praised as an “unorthodox innovator [who] has pushed back the boundaries of oilfield science” by a leading European oil and gas industry journal; extolled as “one of the great minds of the Information Age” by former US president <a href="http://emeagwali.com/video/president-bill-clinton/one-of-the-great-minds-of-the-information-age.wmv">Bill Clinton</a>, and voted history’s 35th greatest African by <a href="http://emeagwali.com/media/africa/greatest-africans-of-all-times.pdf">New African</a>. He won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, the Nobel Prize of supercomputing.</b>
# # #</div>Within the Internet lies Africa’s clay of wisdomhttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/within-the-internet-lies2009-01-14T17:28:04.000Z2009-01-14T17:28:04.000ZTheBlackListhttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/TheBlackList<div><p style="text-align:left;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}3828505948,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" width="450" height="598" /></p>
by Philip Emeagwali
<a href="http://emeagwali.com">emeagwali.com</a>
According to history books, gun-wielding European slave traders kidnapped one in five Africans and transported them across the oceans to the Americas. A less visible, but no means less drastic technological tool of suppression, is the compass, a device used worldwide for navigation. In the same way that Britain used its maritime knowledge and the US harnessed its intellectual capital to rule the world, the early slave traders used the simple compass to wreak havoc on civilization.
It is a sad fact that the innocuous navigation tool originated during and was fuelled by the Atlantic slave trade. The technological development of the innocent compass, invented in China for religious divination 2,000 years ago, allowed Africa to be ravaged in unspeakable ways.
It was the compass that created the Atlantic slave trade, enabling the early colonial navigators — and their blood merchants — to chart an accurate course from Gorée Island, off the coast of Senegal, to Brazil; paving the way for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which began on August 8, 1444. This trade in human merchandise covered four continents and lasted four centuries, and serves as a shameful beacon for the depravity of human greed and conquest.
The compass became the de facto weapon of mass destruction, which led to the de-capitalization and decapitation of Africa. It created the African Diaspora with one in five people taken out of the motherland. It was the largest and most brutal displacement of human beings in human history.
Today, it is hard to imagine that such destruction and the wholesale abduction of a race could result from a tool as common as the compass. Yet, as a people who survived the slave trade, we must draw our strength from lessons learned from the past and draw our energy from the power of the future. And the power of the future lies in “controlling” technology and harnessing it for the benefit of mankind, not for his destruction.
<b>The people of Africa must take note that the Internet is our modern-day compass, and within it resides our own clay of wisdom.</b> As we prepare for our great journey into the cyberspace of the future, with its technological promise — its clay of wisdom — we must understand the strategic value and potential of this all-important tool. Our image of the future inspires the present and the present serves to create the future.
Africa’s lack of substantial technological knowledge of the Internet and its potential may lead it to be assaulted or manipulated in unexpected ways, just as it was devastated generations ago for the lack of a simple compass. We didn’t recognize the power of the compass then; the danger is that we don’t recognize the power of technology today. While Africa merely contemplates the future, the West, the quickest off the mark to wield technology’s weapons, actually makes the future.
This fact, and how the power of technology can be wielded against the poor, was brought home to me clearly when I received the following email recently:
“About a year ago, I hired a developer in Africa to do my job. I am paying him $12,000 a year to do my job, for which I am paid $67,000 a year,” the sender wrote. “He’s happy to have the work and I’m happy that I have to work only 90 minutes a day. Now I’m considering getting a second job and doing the same thing.”
Technology in the hands of others has been used to exploit Africa for centuries. But now it's time for Africa to grasp technology and finally embrace the modern age’s clay of wisdom and advancement. Africa has the chance to show the world how technology can be used for good, not evil. And the people of Africa can use today’s technology, not to mimic their own exploitation, but to right the wrongs of the past and empower themselves with the same tool that has been used to oppress them in the past. Africa can provide a shining example for the world in using technology for its own upliftment and the benefit of mankind.
This time, it is our choice.
Transcribed from a speech delivered by <a href="http://www.emeagwali.com/">Philip Emeagwali</a> at the African Diaspora Conference in Tucson, Arizona. The entire transcript is posted at <a href="http://www.emeagwali.com/">emeagwali.com</a>.
Philip Emeagwali has been called “a father of the Internet” by <a href="http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/fyi/interactive/specials/bhm/story/black.innovators.html#1">CNN</a> and <a href="http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/04.html">TIME</a>; praised as an “unorthodox innovator [who] has pushed back the boundaries of oilfield science” by a leading European oil and gas industry journal; extolled as “one of the great minds of the Information Age” by former US president <a href="http://emeagwali.com/video/president-bill-clinton/one-of-the-great-minds-of-the-information-age.wmv">Bill Clinton</a>, and voted history’s 35th greatest African by <a href="http://emeagwali.com/media/africa/greatest-africans-of-all-times.pdf">New African</a>. He won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, the Nobel Prize of supercomputing.
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