Conclusions

The overall picture of the informational needs for a developing country is quite different from one in the developed world. Access to relevant information at the point of need is critical for the empowerment and development of rural people. Robust computer systems and low-cost rural telecommunications are required to establish points of presence in remote areas.

HCI practitioners must work to consider the needs of low-literate or illiterate peoples and find ways to deal with multi-lingual cultures. Approaches to eliciting requirements must involve a dialogue between end-user and designer. It is difficult to establish common ground between disparate cultures, but we must try.

Developing nations must adopt the Internet, but not at the expense of their own culture. The entire information society must value diversity and not seek to eliminate differences by imposing a monoculture. Emphasizing the social benefits of technology is important, because it encourages individuals to be producers and consumers of information. A technology that values the culture of its users will be more widely accepted than one that merely acts as a conduit to a foreign culture.

Globalization proceeds to reduce the differences between peoples and between nations. The net effect is to make nation-states interdependent and more homogenous. While the East-West divide may have lessened in recent years, the economic gap between "North and South," "developed versus undeveloped" will cause friction in the process of globalization.

In economic terms, there is a gap between rich and poor. In technology, there is a gap between "information rich" —those with ready access to relevant information—and "information poor," for whom accessing information and communicating is a real struggle. We have not even begun to address these gaps in the design of information systems. There is a danger that the globalization accelerated by the Internet and the Web will end with the homogenization of socio-cultural resources.

On the positive side, while a developing country may be lacking in modern infrastructure, technological developments have the potential to progress in leaps and bounds, rather than incremental steps. Indeed, in order to keep up with the current trend towards globalization, the developing nations will need to "leapfrog" in order to close both the economic and information gaps.