The Responsibilities of the High-Tech Industries and the Regions That Are Making Wealth to the Rest of the World

Gilo ¢ When I look at globalization, the governments, and the free markets, there is no balance today, obviously between people that have and people that have not. And part of the issue we are facing in Afghanistan is not just the religious phenomenon in some soil. People are frustrated because they don't have the basic needs of life; and with the communication today, everyone sees everything on CNN everyday. Before, the ability of the people in poor regions to see or understand what the wealthy nations had was very remote. Now everybody sees everything and where cooperation between industries, governments , and countries has to take place is really looking at those issues, because we can't continue with the way we lead our life like that.

There are a lot of issues to globalization that are not easy to deal with, such as the environment, employment, and distribution of wealth, that we have to be much more concerned about. Especially those of us who can bring new resources and approaches to how to do it, not in the bureaucratic way, and not in the big government way, but still deal with those issues.

Joshi ¢ I fully agree with these concerns. The biggest challenge of globalization is indeed the responsibility of the "haves" in a nation toward the global "have nots." You can't just stay cocooned in the U.S. The shocking and tragic events of September 11 clearly brought home the message that care must be extended to the have nots everywhere in some fashion.

Gilo ¢ Maybe some of the things in the high-tech arena that people are doing in industry can be applied to world problems. So, the emergence of the philanthropic foundations of the people who make a lot of money, through NGOs, play a significant role in third world countries. Look at Bill Gates, for example. He gave huge amounts of money to fight AIDS and distribute medicines to third world nations (through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). But we have to deal with it and our governments have to deal with it. We can't just be takers. We have to be givers as well.