There has been little or no apparent rejection, as far as I can tell, of the Internet as a "white man's technology", as extraneous and irrelevant to local cultural life, or as an overpriced commodity imported from abroad (and that it definitely is).

And why should there be? The problem with the normal interrogation of this issue is that there is a failure to recognize that while the physical technology may have been developed elsewhere, the concepts which undergird it's use and operation are often indigenous. If anything, the real "white man's" technology is anything that is based on unidirectional broadcast and private property ownership (broadcast television, etc.), as opposed to the multidirectional and communal tendencies of the internet and other forms of online communication. The internet comes closer than any other "outside" form to what non-white people would create if given a choice. The barriers they face in acquiring the physical tools to participate says nothing about how the idea of the internet resonates with many of their cultural values. So, if there is a digital divide, it's brought about not by lack of interest, laziness, nihilism, or apathy, but by economic and institutional barriers to getting at the means of production and consumption.

This of course speaks to the particularities of Trinidad, and I would not expect similar findings in all parts of whatever one may call it, the Third World, the lesser developed countries, ex-colonies, etc., etc.

There is nothing surprising to me about the Trinidadian situation, and in reading the research it in many ways mirrored my perceptions and personal experience as a Black person here in the United States. Obviously there are many objective differences, but there is a Pan-African thread, however thin it may be, that ties them together. Art McGee Principal Consultant Virtual Identity Communications+Media+Technology 1-510-967-9381 Copyrights and Copywrongs <http://nytimes.com/imagepages/2003/09/16/arts/20030916_POPLIFE_IMAGE.html>