At the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society, Robert Mugabe, the (soon to be ex?) president of Zimbabwe, accused Britain, the United States and Australia of using the Internet to destroy Zimbabwe and colonize Third World countries, according to reports of the event from the Daily Telegraph. Mugabe told the conference that Internet communications are “spin-offs of the same industry that allows once again for the conquest of our societies. . .the same platforms used for high-tech espionage.”

Perhaps if Mugabe wasn’t quite so dictatorial or had a trace of credibility, his ideas might have been taken more seriously. His political record, which includes controversial land reassignment policies and an economic strategy that has thrown the country into a crisis, have rightfully caused Western leaders to shun his ideas. But in this case, he had a legitimate point.

Colonialism is just a concept from the history books for most Millennials. In the traditional sense, colonialism referred to a system or policy in which one nation maintains or controls another. Africa’s history is riddled with examples. While there are few if any situations like this today, we live in a world that is rife with neo-colonialism. In the most basic sense, neo-colonialism manifests through developed countries’ control over economic and political systems that affect developing countries. My argument is that our Internet surfing habits are also a form of neo-colonialism. The structure of the Internet is contributing to a new imperial structure, which is lifting colonialism from the pages of history and putting it into in cyberspace. More simply put, Web 2.0 is leaving individuals, organizations and even governments from developing countries in the dust.

Here’s why:

• An online presence requires resources that some developing nations just don’t have enough of. Web sites and blogs gives some of us the freedom to present our ideas in the way we choose, which is a great PR opportunity for the people who have the web sites and blogs. But for those who don’t, it leaves a silent void.
  
  For example, try Googling “Democratic Republic of the Congo.” The DRC’s embassy in the U.S. appears only towards the bottom of the first search page. Even so, it does not include basic country information–no DRC government pages or other locally-produced sites. So most of the information that you get about the country is from sites like Wikipedia or the CIA World Factbook. Bottom line: people from the DRC aren’t presenting information about themselves in their own words. Instead, others are doing the characterizing.
  
  

• Web sites based in developing countries have a harder time getting traffic, decreasing their exposure. So even when developing countries create and maintain Web sites, these sites face barriers to getting traffic comparable to sites based in developed countries. Here’s why: the Internet makes it easier to get information from around the world, but people still visit a lot of “local” Web sites because they’re relevant. For example, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Web site probably gets most of its traffic from people in Australia. But in developing countries, fewer people are online, so the pool for local traffic is small. Plus, to get something noticed online, you have to have a good understanding of viral marketing, social networking, and search engine optimization. But there are few people in developing countries that have the tools to do this well.
  
  

• Only determined searchers can find the developing country’s perspective online. Because of the two reasons listed above, search engines, social media and other Web sites are not directing a lot of traffic to Web sites based in developing countries, which makes them difficult to find. They’re often tucked away in the crevices between Web sites from the West and you have to dig around to find them. And there are not a lot of major Web portals that focus on directing traffic beyond the West. You don’t see bloggers from Chad featured on The Huffington Post’s homepage. But maybe you should.

Sure, it’s an imperfect system for everyone, not just the people in developing countries. Stories about people who search their names online only to get results referencing convicted felons or porn stars with whom they share the same name are all too common, and even mildly amusing. But beyond the countries that have online communities vibrant enough to create this sort of dilemma, the problem of representation is greatly magnified.

People who live in industrialized countries and are wired and tech-savvy are defining many things for the people who aren’t. Because they’re the ones putting the information out there in the most visible way, they are having the most influence over societal perception. These unconscious, collective actions are extending the Western world view far beyond first-world borders. It’s not that the wired folks’ perspective isn’t valid or valuable–it certainly might be. But it’s giving the Web a strong Western bias and in some cases, third party perspectives are more common and probably more valuable on certain topics.

Can we fix this disparity? Yes, the Internet is all about voting with your mouse clicks. The Internet decentralizes information to the point where you can be highly discerning about which Web sites you choose to view. So that’s one approach. But on a larger scale, search engines could factor this into their algorithms to yield results that are less biased. Domains could be given higher rank by geography, so if you are searching for something about Liberia, domains that are based in the country would be weighted more heavily. Google tends to shy away from playing politics like it did when it agreed to censor search results in China. But inaction in this case might be a greater political statement, than finding a way to make search results more inclusive.

As we Google, Digg and Tweet our way along, we in the West need to be more conscious that our online behavior takes place within, and shapes, the global community. If the Internet is ever to be a democratic global information bank, then we have to remember that democracy needs to account for the minority too.