What SPECIFIC Changes has the WWW made to the Marshall Islands?
World Wide Web (WWW) is a system of extensively interlinked hypertext documents.
Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) is an island located in the northern Pacific Ocean. Such a big academic definition with a rather small geological country, it seems that no obvious connection between two of them, but the former have brought multiple changes to the latter.
On one hand, searching and matching based on the existence of WWW bring the economic development to Marshall Islands. WWW as a container for storing countless and continuouslyflowing data, which is undoubtedly as the most powerful encyclopedia in the world. Through WWW’s searching engines, we could be exposed to RMI’s geography, biology and human culture from multiple pictures, Few years ago, for most of the Marshallese, work starts at about 8:30 and runs until about 4:30pm, their normal statuses are farmers and fishers, they merely focus on farming or fishing for their family. There is no such thing as unemployment. However, WWW’s information exploration for these islands, Marshall Islands’ tourism is flourishing. Tourists are willing to walk on these tropical paradises with few modern world problems by their own. According to statistic in EPPSO,[1]the total number of visitors to RMI increased from 3183 in 1989 to 9173 in 2005. Many economists also predict that tourism industry should be the best hope for future foreign exchange earnings in RMI.
In a mutual process, Marshalleses also could do their specific searching and matching toward outside, so the economy combines wholesale and retail trades with China and the United States could become more mature than before. For example, they would better not to make their typical copra cake and oil exports business with China Hainan province.[2]
On the other hand, the remarkable property of WWW is its worldwide influence. RMI also takes advantage of it when coping with their national issues. Such as global-warming environment, RMI is particularly vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise. Recently the charge for American’s earlier nuclear experiments, because nuclear contamination still an issue for RMI. Moreover, how they manage their marine, freshwater and energy resources in a long run. As an exploration for multiple countries and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) that experienced 67 nuclear tests in the 1940s and 50s, nowadays, RMI could share, analyze, and obtain awareness and suggestions from all-the world, which is an amazing change from the past.
In conclusion, as WWW brings a trend of globalization, even though as a small country, whether from economical or psychological side, I think Marshall Islands have already experienced a lot in these years. We should say thank you to WWW for broadening our eyes to outside world and now we could see every small role’s amplified significance as long as we are willing to see them.
Professor James asked us to write a paper for this question which I thought was very interesting. Because few of us had ever stopped to think about this question or even knew where and what were Marshall Islands. However, actually everything in the world could make their connection with each other, that was the magic of world and the inner power of our thoughts.
[1]Economic policy planning and statistics office under the office of President, Republic of Marshall Islands
[2]The southernmost province of China