The Internet is a little like a gun. When used responsibly, it’s a valuable tool that can improve the lives of people who have it. When used irresponsibly, it creates all sorts of mayhem and harm. Both are metaphoric two-edged swords, cutting for good or for ill.
We saw this dynamic recently among the people of the Marubo tribe, who live in a remote section of western Brazil, deep in the Amazon jungle. Google’s AI Overview claims it can take a week to get to some of their villages, which have been isolated from most of the world for most of their history. But September marks the two-year anniversary of the tribe getting access to high-speed Internet and the reviews are decidedly mixed.
It was initially hailed as a way for the tribe to quickly communicate with authorities in emergencies like venomous snakebites - as if the Marubo have never encountered such hazards before - along with sharing knowledge and reconnecting with people who now live elsewhere. Those are all true and very good things.
The other edge of this sword, however, is less encouraging. “But now, things have gotten worse,” said 73-year old tribesman Tsainama Marubo. “Young people have gotten lazy because of the Internet, they’re learning the ways of the white people.”
One of the ways of the white people is pornography. Another tribal citizen named Alfredo Marubo - the surname is shared among members of the tribe - noticed that Marubo men are sharing porn videos resulting in what he called “aggressive sexual behavior” by some of them. Alfredo further observed “Everyone is so connected that sometimes they don’t even talk to their own family.”
All of this circles back to Vice President Kamala Harris who wants to bring the ways of the white people to Africa. Her effort was heralded by the White House earlier this year, announcing that “the United States government has invested $82 million in new digital infrastructure, programming, and projects in Africa.”
This $82 million of American taxpayer money is part of a larger plan to improve access to and use of the digital economy and everything that involves: banking services and access to credit, improved infrastructure and agriculture, and so forth. Harris’s call to action reckons to bring the Internet to about 80% of the continent’s population. Sounds great.
Setting aside the scourge of porn and social isolation that the Internet can bring to societies, Harris might have better luck getting Africa online than she’s had getting America online. If you thought Harris dropping the ball on building more electric vehicle charging stations was an epic failure, her results in connecting more Americans to broadband are even worse.
In a review of progress on the $42 billion effort called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in 2021, Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Sen. Ted Cruz noted, “Despite National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) three-year-old clear statutory mandate to bring the Internet to the unserved, your agency has failed to connect a single American.” (emphasis added.)
Kamala Harris likes to talk about how she is unburdened by what has been. She’s also unburdened by success. The appalling results of these initiatives should result in a blizzard of pink slips for whoever gets credit for these galactic embarrassments, starting with Harris herself. Instead, she’s promising to spend even more tax money on more programs destined to deliver more failure.
If Harris can’t manage to get the Internet to places like Jordan Valley, Oregon, how does she plan on bringing it to the interior of the Democratic Republic of Congo? I don’t want to prejudge anything but the odds seem long. And if Harris does succeed in bringing the ways of the white people to the DRC, what will they do with it? Some will use it constructively and exploit the very best the Internet has to offer. Others will squander the opportunity, descending into an abyss of perverted isolation, as we saw with the Marubo.
But there’s a big difference between the Amazon and whatever happens in Africa. It was the private sector that brought the Internet to the Marubo and there’s no reason to believe the federal government is capable of replicating that success. Given what Tsainama Marubo saw in his community, it might be a good thing if the U.S. government fails in connecting Africa to the Internet. I just wish failure wasn’t so expensive.