During the past 40 years American Samoa has done very little to create economic development. We have a few very nice fast food restaurants, thousands of cell phones and many fancy cars. Conversely though, if you look around you will find that, in general, the quality of products offered in stores and the quality of services offered have changed very little, if at all.

Now that the canneries are leaving and downsizing we are scrambling around trying to find some way to diversify and improve our economy. The problem is we don't really seem to understand what economic development is.

Encarta Encyclopedia defines Economic Development as: "Promotion of more intensive and more advanced economic activity through such means as education, improved tools and techniques, more available financing, better transportation facilities, and creation of new businesses." An essential ingredient in economic development is the sustainable and practical introduction of higher technologies.

As you read this definition please consider the undersea fiber optic cable as a "transportation facility" for purposes of transporting a product such as resolved problems at a call center or received data for storage at an online data storage facility. This transportation ingredient is complex in today's world.

It is well known that technological change accounted for almost 90 percent of U.S. economic growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. American Samoa is now at the threshold of a major technological change and we need to make every effort to take advantage of the new opportunities offered.

In a small, geographically isolated community such as ours, economic development must include new ways to bring new money into our economy. This can be done by the traditional methods of export trade like our canneries have provided for us. But other forms of export trade include tourism, call centers and the sale of other services for which we receive money from outside our economy.

I will be expanding my thoughts on technology related opportunities in future blogs. But, right now, I would love to hear from others on this subject.