Ever heard of Jambongan Island? It’s a small island, twice the size of Singapore, located north-east of Sabah, Malaysia — an island where you can still see mousedeer running around in nearby bushes. Wild boars are in great numbers, so are many types of birds and other wildlifes.
Late last year my brother, who is a teacher at a primary school there, told me that the island now able to connect to the cyberspace, using a VSAT (very small aperture terminal) facility. I said, that’s good.
I encourage him to blog about the island and the life of the people there and bring out the story of Jambongan to the outside world.
He said he’ll do so. Recently though, he told me, there was a bit of electricity problems there. The solar power unit was not functioning, he said, while the generator set often runs out of fuel. He said he had lost interest in starting a blog because of the lack of connectivity. I know what he meant. I guess, you too, know how it is, not being able to connect to the Internet as and when you feel like it.
It’s a different story in another part of Southeast Asia.
Take Singapore, for example. It’s among the most wired nations in the world. In the next few years, the island state also embarking on an island-wide wireless, very high speed, broadband connectivity, thus galloping ahead of its neighbours into the age of digital.
So… yeah, digital divide is very real. Hmm… I thought I heard Roger Waters singing Who Needs Information as I blog this.
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