The other Middle East.

The Huffington Post, God bless 'em, have pulled together a series on the potential of technology and problem solving in the Middle East. They've kicked it off with my opener here, which is probably as close to my manifesto as anything I've written:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-m-schroeder/this-also-is-the-middle-e_b_6057194.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

BTW, note three things. I just returned from Cairo at an amazing gathering of near 4,000 young entrepreneurs, and there were 45 or so journalists there -- not one from the West. Second, note what "related" articles there are to my piece here -- all about doom and brutality. Third, if you post this piece on your social networks guess what image pops up? Protesters and crack downs in Syria from three years ago.

We seem incapable of holding two conflicting realities in our minds at the same time, and are forever drawn to the one narrative we understand.

And yet:

For the first time in history, the Middle East -- and all emerging worlds -- have progressively ubiquitous access to technology. This is not one more paean to some high-tech utopian wonderment. It is simply a statement of fact: within the decade two-thirds of humanity will have the equivalent of a super computer -- the computing power that put a man on the moon -- in their pockets.

They will have unprecedented access to each other, to ideas that worked elsewhere and that they now know can work for them, to essentially all of human knowledge at their fingertips. They will use even basic technology -- a texting-capable, old-school phone -- to move money and simple crafts to markets they could never before reach. They will have access to supplemental education in ways once reserved only for the wealthy to compensate for their failing education systems. They will find clever ways to address problems because millions of more people with great talent and genius -- who have always been there -- can now engage.

My point is not that these are not very hard times for the region, and emerging worlds more broadly. My point is that we consistently hear only one confirming narrative. ISIS is serious, brutal, and causing terrible dislocation. It also may represent 20,000 or so with albeit more followers. We should, at the same time, want to consider what else is happening among a vibrant region of over 350 million, and how new tools may allow new impact.