The information gap between rich and poor in the world is difficult to assess. For example, it took me three months to find out from a perplexed Bangladeshi embassy official in Washington, D.C., what fraction of their economy is devoted to hardware and software products and related services. He finally calculated the fraction at one-tenth of 1 percent. In the United States, the corresponding figure is 100 times larger-fully 10 percent of our economy goes to information technology. Since the average Bangladeshi is 30 times poorer than the average American, the disparity, per person, between our annual expenditure on information technology and theirs is even more staggering-on average, $3,000 for each American, versus $1 for each Bangladeshi!

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