Technology in developing worlds

Technology is a double edged sword in developing countries. My site for example is a rural site up in the mountains and it, along with hundreds of other sites in Honduras, would not be connected to the outside world if it were not for technology. There is no infrastructure in these rural sites it would be difficult to persuade the phone companies to build the infrastructure for a telecommunications system miles away from the closest big city for only a couple hundred people that live there. It wouldn make fiscal sense. Multiply that by the hundreds of little villages around Honduras and you could see it would be a big drain on resources for the phone companies just to lay the wire. However, with cell phones, all they need to do is put up one tower and all of a sudden thousands of people can get cheap cell phones and pay as you go plans. In Honduras just about everyone pays per minute (about 5 cents a minute or per message) and incoming calls and messages are free. So now even in my small site I can make and receive calls.
Satellite T.V enables people in my site to get the latest soap operas and music channels. One person will get a dish and will split the signal for a charge. It comes to cost about $5 per month. With cell phones and satellite T.V, anyone that visits my site would find it hard to believe that they were in a 3rd world country.
But despite these luxuries, the majority of the people here have never used a computer. There is no internet here unless you get a wireless modem, but only about 4 or 5 people in town have computers in their house (the educated ones). The rest of the people will most likely live and die by the coffee fields, with T.V as their only comforting refuge. As this world had entered the digital age, the people in developing worlds are falling more and more behind. Yes it brings them luxuries but it also makes it almost impossible to catch up. They need to know how to learn to use computers to get a job in a well paying company but how will they get such computers or education? There only option to earn a living is to continue what their parents did and work on the coffee fields and thus the cycle starts all over again. This doesn even account for the effects of said technology on the people. Cell phone thefts are probably the most common theft here in Honduras. Many people die from refusing to give up their cell phones as well. And the effects of T.V? The people here see the wealth on T.V and desperately want to live those lives. However, they don want to put the work into getting it. As T.V glamorizes everything (no one wants to see a T.V show of the daily grind of the average working guy), they don see all the hard work that goes into making an honest living. This is compounded with the fact that many Hondurans live off of remittances they have family members who are in the states working (most illegally) and they send money back to Honduras. Considering that the average Honduran in a rural site such as mine only makes $70 a month, when a family member mails back $4,000 for a year work it is easy to decide to not work at all.
So this is essentially one aspect of the situation in Honduras right now. Still to be discussed are the rampant drug gangs and drugs, corrupt police and government, the education system that is going down the drain, and the companies from the developed countries that are here to take advantage of the situation.
On that note I did get a blackberry. I got it because I have no internet at my site and didn want to have to bring my computer to the bit city just to check email the blackberry has wi-fi so it would be all I need to take. It came with a month of free internet and blackberry services so I am connected at the moment but once it is up I will be back in the dark.

update 2

I have been in my new house for a month now but I still am not fully furnished. I need to buy a table and bookshelves as all my stuff is on the floor. I have spent personal money as well much to my chagrin. I have also been traveling a lot as well. August proves to be busy as well - the peace corps olympics as well as a noche de fumadores (smokers night). It is a night celebrating cigars as santa rosa, the largrest city near my site, is known for their cigars. Unfortunately for me that means a lot more money to spend. A lucky thing is that by being in such a small site I don't spend much money as there is nothing to do. But right now moving in has drained my resources. But you can't put a price on experience, right?
But I will have to admit that my peace corps experience is nothing like I imagined. People living here are not living in huts or anything. They have cable tv and everyone has a cellphone. But the cell plan that everyone has is pay as you go. It is free to receive calls and texts and it only costs to call and send. Their ar plans but those are limited to the well off. They still rely on firewood to cook and the water is not drinkable without purification. But that in itself does not make that much of a hardship - their are people in the states that live in the mountains like that. More on this next time...