Dear Editor,
Why do newspapers carry so many advertisements for electronic equipment? Last Sunday I counted ads for seven kinds of televisions and thirteen kinds of radios in the Atlanta Journal. Besides that, there were pages and pages of ads for tape recorders and CD players.
Don't you realize what electronic equipment is doing to our daily life? Everywhere you go you may hear loud music and advertisements over radios; this continual noise is doing harm to our ears. Husbands don't talk to wives anymore; they are always watching the news or a ball game on TV. Children ruin their eyes with endless hours of watching not only the programs for children but those for grownups as well. And worse, hidden microphones find out about our private lives, and computers keep records of personal information about us.
Enough is enough! I think you should limit the amount of advertising of electronic equipment in the Atlanta Journal; otherwise it will make life unbearable for us all.

Cyberspace, data superhighway, multimedia - for those who have seen the future, the linking of computers, television and telephones will change our lives forever. Yet for all the talk of a forthcoming technological utopia, little attention has been given to the implications of these developments for the poor. As with all new high technology, while the West concerns itself with the "how", the question of "for whom" is put aside once again.
Economists are only now realizing the full extent to which the communications revolution has affected the world economy. Information technology allows the extension of trade across geographical and industrial boundaries, and transnational corporations take full advantage of it. Terms of trade, exchange and interest rates and money movements are more important than the production of goods. The electronic economy made possible by information technology allows the haves to increase their control on global markets - with destructive impact on the have-nots.
For them the result is instability. Developing countries which rely on the production of a small range of goods for export are made to feel like small parts in the international economic machine. As futures" are traded on computer screens, developing countries simply have less and less control of their destinies.
So what are the options for regaining control? One alternative is for developing countries to buy in the latest computers and telecommunications themselves – so called development communications" modernization. Yet this leads to long-term dependency and perhaps permanent constraints on developing countries economies
Communications technology is generally exported from the U.S., Europe or Japan; the patents, skills and ability to manufacture remain in the hands of a few industrialized countries. It is also expensive, and imported products and services must therefore be bought on credit - credit usually provided by the very countries whose companies stand to gain.
Furthermore, when new technology is introduced there is often too low a level of expertise to exploit it for native development. This means that while local elites, foreign communities and subsidiaries of transnational corporations may benefit, those whose lives depend on access to the information are denied it.