Islands in the DataStream

I just finished reading a really great post by my good friend Jason.  My friend has been a forerunner in the web landscape of our little island of Guam for the past . . . I don’t know eight years or so.  He’s also established himself as one of Guam’s foremost prognosticators (for lack of a better word) in the adoption and success of various technologies, consumer electronic goodies and pretty much everything nerdy, er, tech related in Guam.

Talk about spot on.  He’s really got his finger on the pulse of Guam’s tech industry, or lack of therein.  People in Guam have always known that our island has been slow to adopt anything modern.  It comes with the territory (no pun intended).  We’re a small rock in the middle of the largest ocean on this Earth with a population of some 100,000 or so.  What else can you expect, right?

But hey, we’re a territory of the world’s largest superpower!!  We’ve got, not one, but TWO U.S. military bases here.  That makes us a strategic military resource to our mother country.  We’ve also got this HUGE multi-billion dollar tourism industry that is a significant market segment of the outbound tourist traffic from Japan – the country with the world’s largest number of tourist based outbound travel.  And why wouldn’t we.  Our island’s a beautiful island paradise and is US soil, so when you’re here, you can feel confident that you are in a safe place.

Therein lies Guam’s identity conundrum.  Jason did a great job of giving Guam’s tech report card.  Now here’s my shot at playing parent-teacher conference and explaining why Guam’s such a disappoint to so many.  Especially many of whom choose to call Guam their home.

You see, no matter what we think of Guam, because of geographic logistics, we will always be just like the little rural town of Sleepy, Iowa (sorry that’s a fictituos stereotypical town, not real) that doesn’t have a metropolis within 1,000 miles of it.  Run by an overweight Sheriff and his cousin the Judge; with a Mayor who keeps getting elected because his wife makes the best apple pie.

We see it portrayed all the time on TV, but we won’t admit that we aren’t that much different.  Everyone in Guam knows everyone else and when you do meet someone for the first time, you’re guaranteed to run into them again sometime in the future.  The same people or their people and their friends run the government.  The big businesses in Guam are all owned by an elite few.  Whenever a big company, i.e. K Mart, Home Depot, come in, everyone gets excited but there’s always those complaining that they’re killing the local business owners.  In fact, how many times has someone tried to use the “Support local businesses” marketing tactic on you?

Despite our true grass roots and small island heritage, everyone watches MTV and Friends and tries to make Guam the big city metropolis that it isn’t.  Okay, we’re lucky.  We’ve got tourism.  So that supports having a Sandcastle (for those wondering, it’s a Vegas style production house), and some nice cappuccino shops and a couple fancy discotheques.  And us local folk get to take advantage of those nice amenities.  Even with a  local discount because we can’t really afford to pay what it really costs to keep them running.

On top of that, because we have tourism and a military presence, we’ve always got big business and sophisticated city folk coming here all the time with their fancy ideas and cool clothes and us island folk get all jealous and want the same thing.  Unfortunately, we aren’t really that well edumacated and we’re really just a bunch of fisherman and farmers.

Now with that as a backdrop, let’s add on the fact that again we’re a small population on a tiny rock in the middle of the Pacific where it costs more to ship an apple here than it does to grow it.  Can we really expect to ever reap in the modern luxuries that our counterparts in New York City and Hollywood do?  Well, its a motivation that’s commendable.  We should stay positive and strive to achieve greatness.  But this is my way of saying – Keep your feet on the ground as you reach for the sky.  (Before anyone cries foul, I AM paraphrasing the great Casey Kasem.)

Well, my blog editor is telling me I’m well on my way to a 1,000 word essay, so I’m gonna cut it here.  Until next time, keep on keepin’ on.

Tags: Guam, military, technology, tourism