New communications technologies are creating a new environment internationally as well as in the United States.  The world is rapidly getting wired, and the Internet is spreading around the globe.  Yet the largest technological impact globally is coming not from the Internet but from the mobile phone.

     There are already more than 2 billion mobile phones in use globally, and according to the consulting firm Market Intelligence, the number of mobile phones in the world will exceed 2.5 billion before the end of 2006—more than twice the number of land lines. More than 20 years elapsed before the first billion mobile phones were in service; just four years were needed to reach the second billion.  At the current pace the third billion—the point at which mobile phone penetration will have reached nearly half the world’s population—will be in service in less than two years, by the end of 2007.²⁴ 
 
     Remarkably, mobile phone penetration already exceeds 100 percent in 30 countries (i.e., there are more mobile phones than people), including Hong Kong where penetration reached 126.5 percent as of May 2005,²⁵  Taiwan, Italy, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland (see Figure 3).  China has by far the largest number of mobile phones in service—400 million—compared to about 200 million in the United States, the country with the second largest number of mobile phones. Moreover, China is adding nearly five million new subscribers each month.

     While the number of mobile phones in use continues to rise, their capabilities also continue to improve.  For many users globally, sending and receiving text messages is as important as or more important than talking on a mobile phone.  Many newer handsets offer features such as games, music players, cameras, and geopositioning (the ability to determine the phone’s location).  “Smart phones” that include many capabilities of computers are becoming more common as they become less expensive.  In Europe and other parts of the world, so-called Third Generation (3G) networks are now operating; these networks support delivery of full-motion video as well as text and voice.  Television producers have already begun to create video content that has been developed specifically for delivery to cell phones.

     Mobile phones have become deeply embedded in the lives of many users.  According to a survey of young adults, ages 15 to 35, in 11 countries—including the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil, China, India, Saudi Arabia, and the United States—conducted in 2006 for Nokia, a majority of mobile phone users “cannot imagine life without their mobile phone.” One-fifth of young mobile phone users said that they would be more upset at losing their mobile phone than losing their wallet, their credit cards, or their wedding ring.  Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) reported that they no longer use an alarm clock in the morning; instead, they depend on the alarm in their mobile phone to wake them. Among respondents who were not currently using a mobile phone, 94 percent said that they planned to get one.²⁶
 
     The most dramatic impact of the mobile phone is being felt in the developing world. Although penetration in Africa is only about 20 percent of the population, the growth of new mobile customers is very high:  Over the past 12 months, the growth rate was nearly 100 percent—approximately twice the world rate of 50 percent.²⁷   In Ghana more than one-third of the population now has mobile phones, compared to just 3 percent with Internet access. Nigeria is now one of the 10 fastest-growing mobile phone markets in the world.

     In much of the developing world, cell phones are not supplementing or replacing land lines; they are bringing phone service to these communities for the first time.²⁸  To illustrate the impact that the introduction of mobile phones has had in places such as Africa, Kwaku Sakyi-Addo of BBC World told a story about getting his father a mobile phone for his 80th birthday.  Although his father had worked as an education officer in Ghana when he was younger, he rarely had access to any phone service. Sakyi-Addo explained what happened after his father, who lives in a village about an hour from the capital, got the phone:

He asked my cousin, a teacher, who lives in the town to come over and show him what to do with it.  It wasn’t long before he called me to say thank you.  But it was few days later before he managed to send his first text message.  “This is your dad.  Are you receiving this message?” the text asked.
“Yes, yes, Dad,” I texted back excitedly.
“Thank you for this,” he keyed back.
“U R welcome, Dad,” I replied.
Then I received yet another text shortly afterward, this time from my cousin: “Ur father is crying.”
“Me 2,” I replied.

     Mobile phones also are being used to extend the reach of traditional media.  During recent elections in Ghana, individual “citizen journalists” used their phones to call in reports of local results to radio stations that broadcast the information nationally. 
 
     Funmi Iyanda, host of “New Dawn with Funmi,” a popular national television program in Nigeria, agreed that mobile phones are a powerful tool. Iyanda personally pays for eight cell phones so that members of her family can be connected. She noted that in much of Africa, broadcast media, including television and radio, still have the broadest reach and remain highly influential.  Increasingly, however, Africans are putting more trust into what they hear directly from others through these new media.

     For much of the world, a mobile phone rather than a personal computer is likely to be the principal access device to the Internet.  Yet as FOCAS co-chair and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt noted, mobile phone networks are not open in the same way the Internet is.  Cell phone networks are entirely owned and controlled by their operators.  Anyone who wants to use one of the wireless networks to distribute content can do so only with the permission of its operator.  In some countries, governments maintain control over cell phone networks and regard them as a potential threat to their authority. Hundt noted that it would be helpful if the United States took a strong position in favor of open cell phone networks.  

Wiring the World

     These new media—the Internet and the mobile phone—are helping to create a new global political dynamic. The best way to understand this shift, according to John Rendon of the Rendon Group, is to look at “self-organizing systems” that are not structured hierarchically but are able to function effectively. A simple example is the way a colony of ants operates. Wikipedia, which is being created and maintained by thousands of individual, independent contributors who share a few common guiding principles, is another example.  The impact of bloggers, who are even more loosely connected but keep in contact with what other bloggers with common interests are saying, is yet another example. 

     The result is that we are no longer living in a single political “universe” but in a radically decentralized “multiverse.”  Although this new world may be unfamiliar, Rendon argued that it is in the strategic interest of the United States that the world get wired.   Having a robust communications infrastructure that lets people talk with one another may be a prerequisite for breaking the power of elite autocracies and converting authoritarian governments to democracies.  According to Joseph Nye of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, 30,000 police in China are attempting to monitor more than 100 million Internet users and 400 million cell phone users.  These new media cannot be controlled, and they are helping to bring about a social and sexual revolution that will provide the basis for the demand for political change.

     Creating better connections between Americans and people abroad is critical to improving the standing of this country in the world.  John Rendon cited a study of attitudes toward the United States among people in other countries that found that those who had had direct contact with Americans, either by studying or working in the United States, or had immediate family members who did so, tended to define this country in terms of the American people. Their opinion of the United States ranged from highly positive to mildly negative.  Those who had not had any direct contact with Americans, however, typically regard this country in terms of U.S. companies and had more negative attitudes. Those who were separated by an even greater degree tended to view the United States in terms of the country’s foreign policy and had the most negative attitudes of all.²⁹
 
     In the long run, Rendon argued, engagement in communication with the rest of the world, by the American people, not just their government, is in the strategic interest of this country.  The government should not be the primary actor, but it should be the enabler of this kind of communication.

     According to several FOCAS participants, the U.S. government has failed to recognize this shift and continues to use an outmoded top-down model for communicating with the world.  Nye noted that the U.S. government currently spends $500 million annually on “public diplomacy” that is intended to explain and defend our policies to the rest of the world.  About $100 million of this money goes to support Alhurra, the federally funded Arab-language satellite television service.  The service was launched in 2004 as the “U.S. answer to Al-Jazeera.” The network’s programs are slick and have high production values, but they are widely viewed by the intended audience as U.S. propaganda.  By contrast, the United States spends about $30 million on Radio Sawa, a service that is aimed at younger people in Arabic countries.  The content of Radio Sawa is mainly pop music programs. As a result, its programming is considerably more popular in the Middle East than that of Alhurra. 

     In fact, according to Nye—who coined the concept of “soft power” in his 1990 book Bound to Lead—the United States has been most effective in the world when it has used a combination of soft power and hard power.  The Berlin Wall was brought down by sledgehammers wielded by the citizens of Germany who demanded freedom for themselves, not by bombs or military action.  A more effective use of television to communicate U.S. values would be to turn Alhurra into an international version of C-SPAN, supporting citizen-to-citizen communication from this country’s civil society, rather than acting as a megaphone for official government positions. 

     Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright agreed that the approach this country has taken in communicating with the world is not true public diplomacy. We are engaged not in a “clash of civilizations” but in a battle of ideas with our adversaries. Our messages are being discounted and ignored because they are regarded as a “control mechanism,” not a good-faith effort to engage in dialogue, which involves listening as well as speaking. We should be expanding exchanges with foreign students, yet we are closing the doors to immigration in the name of national security.  Although Albright believes in the concept of soft power, she worries that the label is counterproductive: “The problem with soft power is that it sounds soft.”

     Supporting greater interconnectedness among everyone may be in our long-term interest, but it also has a dark side. People tend to listen to the ideas that are appealing to them, and the Internet allows everyone to find reinforcement for their own point of view.  As Arthur Sulzberger of The New York Times asked, “If being wired is so positive, why is there such a rapid growth of militant fundamentalism around the world?  If Afghanistan were totally wired, would terrorist cells stop growing?”  Certainly the Internet helps niche groups of all types coalesce.  As David Ignatius noted in a column in The Washington Post, quoting Charles McLean, the Internet can act as a “rage enabler,” providing “instant, persistent, real-time stimuli [that] takes anger to a higher level.”³⁰ 
 
     Moreover, extremists also are using the latest technologies, such as video games and wikis, as recruitment tools. As Cory Ondrejka of Linden Lab noted, we may be the only ones who are not using these tools to communicate with the rest of the world.  Although hearing someone express a viewpoint that agrees with one’s own may be gratifying, engaging in constructive collaboration with others helps to build trust.  For example, the popularity of Wikipedia is global.  There are already Wikipedia entries in more than 150 languages, and there are more than 20,000 entries each in 30 different languages.  Although the spread of technology will have disparate effects, not all of which are benign, its overall impact is likely to favor greater democratization, particularly if we can help to shape its evolution.

     Not every development in the world can be explained by technology, but technology matters—and so does the content that is being disseminated by it.  Tracy Westen concluded the discussion by noting that in the 20th century more than 100 million deaths were caused by “toxic ideologies.”  Just as we have developed effective means of counteracting physical toxins, we need to find methods for combating pernicious ideas and ideologies. We need to come up with new narratives that will be credible to the world and effectively convey our values and beliefs.   Moreover, rather than relying on official government spokespeople, the best way to do this may be to trust the American people themselves, empowered by technology, to tell their own stories and develop their own links with the rest of the world.

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