Global Communication by Cees J Hamelink

Author:Cees J Hamelink
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473911581
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Published: 2015-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

According to Castells (2001: 270), the digital divide is the “divide created between those individuals, firms, institutions, regions, societies that have the material and cultural conditions to operate in the digital world, and those who cannot, or cannot adapt to the speed of change”. Could education play a role in bridging gaps in global digital densities?

The WSIS discourse on the digital divide did not critically question whether rich–poor divides can at all be resolved within the framework of the prevailing development paradigm. Following this, development is conceived of as a state of affairs which exists in society A and, unfortunately, not in society B. Therefore, through some project of intervention in society B, resources have to be transferred from A to B. Development is thus a relationship between interventionists and the subjects of intervention. The interventionists transfer such resources as information, ICT, and knowledge as inputs that will lead to development as an output. In this approach, development is “the delivery of resources” (Kaplan, 1999: 5–7). This position was reflected in the conceptual framework of the WSIS discourse that conceives development as delivery. This delivery process is geared towards the integration of its recipients into a global marketplace. There is no space for a different conceptualization of development as a process of empowerment that intends “to enable people to participate in the governance of their own lives” (Kaplan, 1999: 19).

A difficult problem is that if indeed greater global equality in access to information could be achieved, this would not guarantee an improvement in the quality of people’s lives. “Even when these disparities are recognised and new organisational models such as telecentres are proposed, the policy emphasis is frequently biased towards improving access to networks rather than towards content creation and the social processes whereby digital content can be converted into socially or economically useful knowledge” (Mansell, 1999: 8). Including people in the provision of basic public services does not create egalitarian societies. The existing social inequality means that people benefit from these services in highly inegalitarian ways. Actually, the growing literacy in many societies did not bring about more egalitarian social relationships. It certainly did have some empowering effect, but did not significantly alter power relations. Catching up with those who have the distinct social advantage is not a realistic option. They too use the new developments, such as ICTs, and, at a minimum, the gap remains and might even increase. It is a common experience with most technologies that the powerful players know best how to appropriate and control new technological developments and use them to their advantage. In the process they tend to further increase their advantage.

Large disparities in access to the Internet continue to exist, particularly for developing countries. Africa, for example, still very much lags the rest of the world in both mobile and Internet penetration. One widely recognized reason for this is the high costs of international circuits for Internet connectivity between least developed countries and Internet backbone networks. A number of initiatives are under way to address this problem.

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