orum for the exchange of ideas, academic resources, research and social interaction: the Internet. For the most part, it has been the developed world that has reaped the benefits of the Internet and the whole of IT.However, LDC’s have benefited as well. Rich industrial economies will continue to enjoy an advantage in knowledge-intensive industries but the lines between skill-rich and skill-poor countries are becoming less rigid. After years of heavy investment in education skills in Asian countries are catching up: R&D as a share of GDP in South Korea and Taiwan is now close to the OECD average and growing at a faster rate. Another example is India. More than 100 of America's top 500 firms buy software services from firms in India where programmers are typically paid less than their American counterparts, but still far more than the average wage. As IT expands the scope for trade in services it will inevitably expose workers in previously sheltered sectors to education and training. The Internet has provided has provided access to Western economic, political and cultural ideas for LDC’s populations. While there is a positive argument for this phenomenon, there are those who would argue that the internet provides yet another opportunity for the homogenization of culture: "Technology expands geographically and by expanding tends to homogenize…the consequence is the dissociation of tradition as a configuration of meaning and its replacement by the aggregation of individuals as elements of a qualitative homogeneous order.” Aside from alleged social consequences, there is an argument that IT firms operating abroad create disparities in wealth and produce a downward harmonization of labor. While these corporations certainly provide jobs, the quality of such jobs is often lower than their American or European counterparts. Additionally, the firms have demonstrated little interest in protecting job security.The argument...
