Most Malaysians would be familiar with Tunku Abdul Rahman’s triumphant cry from the podium of Dataran Merdeka in 1957. Yet not many from the current generation realize just what the Tunku and his collaborators had to go through to gain the British’s agreement to grant Malaya independence.

Think about it for a moment: the most modern form of communication back then was the telephone, and it could take up to an hour just to establish a connection from Kuala Lumpur to London. Fax machines were non-existent, let alone email. Documents took days or even weeks to go back-and-forth between two cities, even by special delivery mail.

In short, international negotiations in the 1950s were a logistical and communications nightmare.

Now, let us imagine for a moment that Tunku Abdul Rahman and other Alliance Party leaders had access to email and instant messaging then. With a communications suite like Windows Live Essentials, might the Tunku along with Tun Tan Cheng Lock and Tun V.T. Sambanthan have more time to spend with the rakyat in the run-up to the 1955 federal general elections? Who knows, the Alliance might have won all fifty-two seats that were contested instead of just fifty-one!

Imagine also the Tunku and his delegation hammering out the details of the Federal Constitution with British policymakers via a live video conferencing link between Kuala Lumpur and London, the way the European Commission does these days across Europe. Imagine them securely collaborating on Malaysian Acts and Codes on a Sharepoint server from their offices in London and KL while leveraging the power of Microsoft Office Live Meeting features like polling and interactive white boards.

If all this had been possible, might not the Tunku’s negotiations with the British Commonwealth have concluded sooner rather than later? If Malaysia had then what it has now, perhaps we might have had an entirely different history.

Let us hypothesize further. It is probably safe to assume that given today’s collaborative technologies, the Lancaster House Independence Treaty of 8 February 1956 might have been signed much sooner, and the Tunku’s inspiring Merdeka speech of 31 August 1957 would have been delivered earlier. Indeed, everything might have moved faster in post-colonial Malaya if it had the benefit of modern communication tools: the formation of Malaysia with Sabah and Sarawak, the country’s industrial revolution, the shift to the information age.

Beyond these conjectures, however, it is impossible to guess what effects such modern communications technologies might have had on the world back then.

What we do know is that collaborative technologies give organizations a competitive edge in today’s global economy, and that even small businesses have found significant cost savings and productivity benefits in these tools.

Might these technologies have had the same effect on governments and international negotiations back in the 1950s?

Only the Tunku would have known the answer to that question.

Happy Merdeka, everyone!