A World Without Technology

For my group's documentary, we stumbled upon a DVD outlining the ongoing issues in Burma. This DVD illustrated the corrupt government in Burma and how this government is treating Burma’s citizens. Thousands of people have fled their homes becuase of the military enforcement from the government. It was shocking to learn that only people who were picked by the government were allowed to have jobs and earn income. All forms of communication were cut off by the Burmese government, including phone lines and Internet. There is little known about the situation in Burma because of the lack of communication, and the little information that we have is coming from activist groups in Burma that somehow manage to get the word out. This sparked a thought in our minds that we would use this idea for our activist project.

After finishing this documentary, Robert, Elisha, Caitlin, and I discussed the issues portrayed in the DVD. We talked about how appalled we were at what was going on and why we had never heard of this situation before. We discussed how media has influenced the situation in Burma and how it continues to shape the events unfolding. We realised that there is not much media exposure on this issue mainly because there is no communication in Burma. Reporters and journalists are not allowed to report about the government in Burma, and if they do they are usually raped and killed. There is not enough awareness in more powerful countries such as the United States and Canada because no one knows about the issues, not that no one cares about the issues. We talked about how the DVD said that major companies have set up factories in Burma because it would be cheaper to pay Burmese people to work for them and we were unsure of why this was being allowed to happen. When well known companies in North America, such as Nike, set up shop in third world countries, it is all over the news and it was disturbing to know that Burma was being ignored.

We decided that for our activist project we would try to raise as much awareness as possible about the corrupt government in Burma. We thought of many ideas and after everyone in the group had seen the documentary we all decided to hold a benefit concert.

Through watching this documentary I learned how large the impact of global communication and media has had on the world. I learned that without communication and media, the problems occurring in the world have much less opportunity to be fixed. It is amazing how much we all rely on technology and communications and how we would not be able to imagine our lives without it. No phones, no e-mail, no Internet, no TV; this concept is foreign, especially to my generation that was born in the late 1980's. This reminds of what Mark Litpon said in class about how my generation has never seen a world without AIDS. My generation has also never seen a world without technology and mass communications - a world that is faced by the Burmese people daily.


Below is a clip from the DVD that I thought was most shocking and would illustrate why we decided to use this DVD for our documentary and our activist project.

Cited Work:

Human Rights in Burma. Dir. Burma Issues, Witness. DVD. Witness, 2007.