Hugely popular apps like Viber and Whatsapp are no longer blocked in Bangladesh. Those Internet services have resumed after a temporary scare, and the country can now continue its steadfast march towards Digital Bangladesh. Sanity has prevailed, and we can all breathe easy knowing the derailment was only temporary.
If only it were that simple, though. It was not too long ago that the government had blocked Youtube and Facebook over the circulation of controversial content. As expected, there was an uproar from users. Some started to mourn the death of these sites, and proceeded to wean themselves off them. Others used their tech brains (it doesn’t take an advanced degree apparently) to get around all these blocks in order to continue to visit the forbidden sites through back doors. The ban was eventually lifted, and life went back to normal.
We should have learnt from that episode about five years ago that you can’t stop the 21st century from happening. Trying to control the digital world through analogue policymaking was as futile an undertaking as trying to change the weather. You can try, with temporary and limited success, but it will make you look ridiculous, and out of touch with the way of the times.
The undeniable reality of today’s world is that it lies in the hands of young people who speak a very different language from our senior government officials who make important policy decisions. The defining feature of the cohort born in the 80s and 90s – digital natives – is that they are as comfortable with apps and touchscreens as their parents are with pen and paper.
Call them spoilt if you want to, but they use smartphone apps as a natural extension of their brains, and there is no turning back from this – not for a country that wants to be taken seriously by the rest of the world.
Technological changes in the communication frontier, particularly in Bangladesh, happen so frighteningly fast that things can understandably get very confusing for those who came of age in a pre-digital era. It doesn’t help that our culture does not encourage cultivating the plasticity of mind required to keep up with all these developments.
Last year, when the issue of exam paper leakage came up, the education minister suggested that Facebook, and even mobile networks, should be blocked as a way to stop students from cheating. The minister may have meant well, but it is doubtful whether he ever grasped the extent to which these things are the primary communication tools of our time and not just some cheating aid for exams.
The instinct of our political elders is often to block this, ban that. That brand of thinking is a relic from another era, and finds itself more and more out of place in the present day. A chasm separates much of our policy talk and the realities of today’s digital economy.
Bangladesh has a long way to go. Unfortunately, we have a knack for taking a step back every time we take a step forward. So now, people can go back to using Viber, Tango, mypeople etc, happy in the knowledge that we have not regressed. But will this stick? Have we really updated our thinking about technology in any broad way, or is it only a matter of time before we do the same thing, citing security concerns?
Our security is of paramount importance, but technology needs to be made our friend. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies would do well to learn more about what’s out there, and use the latest technologies to stop real crimes, and make it harder for culprits to get away.
Gadgets make the community safer in so many ways. People use these communication tools for innumerable reasons, often to ask for help. Clamping down on everyone’s usage in an effort to crack down on the illegal activity of a few does not make a whole lot of sense.
With the advent of social media on computers and later on mobile phones, the world has seen a seismic change in the way things are done. There hasn’t been an accompanying change of that magnitude in our policy thinking. As a result, our political rhetoric is full of abstract talk about the future, while being clueless about what that future would actually look like.
Like it or not, the future is already here. Communications technologies will only advance further. The number of apps in the market will only go up, not down. Short of something apocalyptic, tech is here to stay. Bangladesh’s authorities need to discard their technophobia, and soon. There is simply no other path.
