Rewinding to 1998 and my piece 'Can the South Asian Toad Leapfrog' was a sobering reminder of just how fast technology is moving forward, even in our part of the developing world.
It was nice joke ten years ago to say: "90% of Indians are waiting for phones, and 5% are waiting for dial tones." Look at where we are now: The number of Indians with mobile phones is about to cross the one billion mark. In November 2012, the number of people in India who accessed the internet through their smart phones and tablets exceeded the number of people who accessed it through their PCs or laptops.
In that 1998 article, I poked fun at a minister who said India should graduate from making potato chips to making microchips. I ridiculed Bill Gates and his remark that India could "leapfrog" into the future by turning Bangalore into the digital sweatshop of the internet age. Today, Gates himself has been left trailing behind by embarrassingly young internet billionaires who have adapted to the new mobility that the internet has provided with the spread of i-Phones, Androids and other smart phones.
When that article appeared in Himal, I was making a living being a cyber-skeptic. Before talking about levelling the playing field, I argued, it was important to ensure there was a playing field. Before sticking a computer into a classroom, we should first make sure it has a roof. Or electricity. Or text books. Or qualified teachers. Or that the school-children are not stunted because they don't have enough to eat. We were being carried away by a technology that promised to set everything right overnight. We actually believed that convergence would change the world.