Saturday, March 15, 2008

Digital divide by Manuel Castells

Manuell Castells: The Internet galaxy. Chapter 9: Digital divide is subject i have been thinking a lot lately. There you can read short review and find some coments as well.

Dimensions of digital divide

Internet is used in many areas of life as a social, economic and political activity. Access to Internet is a requirement for overcoming inequality in a society whose governing functions and social groups are organized around the Internet. The meaning of “the digital divide” refers to inequality of access to the Internet. In broader sense, the term digital divide refers to the gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those who are without having access to it.
Castells mentioned some factors which have great influence on phenomena “digital divide”: level of income, education, age, involvement in labour sphere, ethnic digital divide as well as family status (married – unmarried), disability, and geographical location. Interesting that gender doesn’t play that big role, but lack of knowledge of English language might be a barrier to use new technology.
The digital divide measured in terms of access was broader in Europe than North American (November 2000). Age-discrimination much more in Europe with 44 percent of people in the 55-64 years age group being online in the US in contrast with 12 percent for same age group in Europe. Women were almost as likely as men to be online in the US (52 percent to 55 percent) while in Europe the gender gap remained (20 percent to 35 percent). There was a great national difference in the practice of online access in Northern and Southern Europe: the Uk, Germany and the Netherlands had a level of diffusion equivalent to two-thirds that of the US, While France, Italy and Spain had less than one-third of the US level.
However as author of book point out if we look on concept of digital divide in terms of access - gap is shrinking, for example, 63 percent of Americans were online by 2003, and over three-quarters around 2005. The digital divide in terms of access to internet, will be mainly the concern of the poorest, most discriminated segment of the population which will further increase the gap. But, for most people the substantial pre-existing divides between genders, between rural and urban areas, between age groups either disappear or diminishing in just five years (Castells, 2001. p 254). But nowadays new form of digital divide emerges: access to high – speed broadband services, digital subscriber lines, cable modems, as well as wireless – based Internet access. So we can say that the digital or technological divide will never disappear because there are too many factors which influence it. We can say that digital divide also has it own life cycle and it develops in spiral movement. If in the beginning of 1990´s we could talk about access to internet as one of major problems, then now we are talking about knowledge to get information as well as the technological developments and it implementations.

The knowledge gap

Education and long- life learning is essential resource for work achievement, personal development and now internet is one of educational tools in the schools system. Internet based learning is not only matter of technological proficiency. It changes the kind of education that is required both to work on the internet and to develop learning ability in an internet based economy and society. In the information age, most important skills are ability to know what to look for, how to retrieve it, how to process it, and how to use it for specific task. (Information --> knowledge --> action). However Castells is convincing that schools are not the best place to learn to use new technology. He indicates few factors which affect learning new technology:
1) Schools are differentiated by territory, class and race;
2) There are lack of well educated teachers;
3) There exist different pedagogical styles, different schools with different economical and cultural backgrounds;
4) School inability to offer proper education end up with involvement of families.

The global digital divide

The rapid diffusion of the internet is preceding unevenly thought out the planet. However the level of internet penetration for individual countries was lower, for example, developing world. Another problem is that it is difficult to provide accurate picture because access points to the internet might be collectively shared among groups of related people.

Castells conclude that in terms of access it is more likely that we will see fast diffusion of the Internet around most of globe in the coming years. He also puts on record that conditions under which the internet is diffusing are creating a deeper digital divide. Key urban centres, globalized activities, and higher educated social groups are being included in the internet based global networks, while most regions and most people are switched off. The internet in the developing world is being driven by the huge gap in telecommunications infrastructure, internet service providers, and internet content providers as well as by the strategies being used to deal with this gap.
It is important to talk about Internet and digital divide because of the information technology revolution, the rise of the new economy, and diffusion of internet, the world experienced a substantial increase in income inequality, polarization, poverty and social exclusion. Global process of uneven development is the most dramatic expression of the digital divide. The internet based economy and internet based information systems hide many factors which affect and even tend to control society:

1) Dependence on networking and global reach of the new economy;
2) Education, information, science, and technology - critical source of value creation in the internet based economy;
3) Dependence on global financial flows;
4) New technologies, new production systems, new global markets, new structure of world trade eliminate traditional agriculture;
5) Governments are increasingly forced, disciplined, limited by global flows of capital and information;
6) Rise of global criminal economy;
7) Governments suffer a widespread crisis of legitimacy;
8) Crisis of legitimacy cause civil wars, large scale banditry, mass massacres etc.

Digital divide is measured by connections as well as lack of connection. Internet is not just a technology. It is technological tool and organizational form that distributes information power, knowledge generation, and networking capacity in all realms of activity.

There are few things what Castells haven’t mentioned in his chapter about digital divide. For example, digital divide relations to business environment, different national and multi-national companies. The accesses to better broadband connection between companies and eagerness to get information and feedback quickly are becoming the major priority of companies. So the companies with better infrastructure of internet can use this as an incentive in gaining access to global costumers but those with frail internet connectivity or connection lay behind in the competition.
The reader of chapter should keep in mind that book is written in 2001 and now in 2008 the phenomena digital divide shall be analyzed from other perspective as well. Chief research officer at Canada's advanced Internet development organization is convinced that nowadays Digital divide is not anymore question of access or affordability. It is about finding new business models, for example, find opportunities to reduce co2 and invest in green technologies. We can say that it is step in future, however there always will be gap between different countries and it is quite hard to catch up developed countries and maybe idea of new, alternative business models is good solution.
The question i want to post: Can developing countries compete with high developed countries in terms of technology?

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