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Between the Bytes
Who’s afraid of the digital divide? - I
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| Val Souza |
Is the digital divide, that alleged gaping chasm
that separates the ‘technology haves’ from the ‘technology
have-nots,’ a figment of the imagination of over-zealous academics
and activists, sensationalist journalists and ill-informed policy-makers?
Just about a year prior to the turn of the century, the concept
of the digital divide was dramatically catapulted onto the world stage with
disturbingly striking statements such as: “80 percent of the world’s
population have never made a phone call;” “There are more telephones
in Manhattan than in all of rural Asia;” and “There are more Internet
accounts in London than in all of Africa.” About almost the same time that
the dotcom frenzy had reached its height, concern was also being expressed in
different circles that the information revolution was in fact bypassing the
vast majority of people inhabiting planet Earth.
The ‘digital divide’ was a term coined to describe
the apparent disparity brought about by the rapid advancement of information
and communication technologies (ICTs), accessible to and exploitable by only
those who met most or all of very stringent criteria:
- Relatively rich or based in a developed country
- Educated
- Reasonably adept at using modern-day electronic devices
and computers
- Culturally conditioned to blend into the lingua franca
of the technological world (largely English-based and ‘westernised’).
Evidently then, the digital divide emanates from a complex
combination of factors, and, when examined closely, can be broken up into several
types. The first, and most obvious, is a digital divide which exists among the
inhabitants of a country, between residents who are rich and educated, and those
who are poorer and less educated. This applies to all countries, developing
and developed alike.
Another digital divide stems from linguistic and cultural
differences. It’s no secret that the Internet has a significant English-language
bias, along with a predominantly Western flavour. English-language content accounts
for almost three-fourths of the Web, and much of the remaining is either in
a west European language, or in Japanese or Chinese. Further, most operating
interfaces on personal computers also reflect similar biases. Thus, persons
of other cultural and linguistic leanings find computer usage difficult or impossible,
and, even when they do cross this barrier, discover that available Web content
is culturally alien and practically useless to them. MIT professor and digital
divide expert Kenneth Keniston attributes this anomaly to “Anglo-Saxon
linguistic and cultural hegemony.”
Clubbed together, these two digital divides point to another
obvious divide—that between rich and poor countries. And this divide keeps
widening because ICTs are in themselves seen to be enabling and wealth-creating
for countries that have wide access to them.
Such was the situation as it existed five years ago. What’s
been happening since then? Do the statistics tell a different story now? Let’s
take a look at some of them.
- China’s Ministry of Information Industry says the
mobile phone subscriber base in the country reached 320 million at the end
of October 2004. The base increased at an average rate of 5.5 million per
month all through 2004, and there are now 24.8 mobile phones for every 100
Chinese. Fixed-line connections are not far behind, having increased by 48
million to touch 310 million towards the end of 2004. That makes for a whopping
630 million telephone connections in China.
- The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India puts the total
telephone subscriber base in India at 92.76 million, end-2004. This is an
increase of 31 percent over the previous year. The mobile base increased at
a rate of 1.5-2 million per month for all of 2004, and is now pegged at 48
million.
- The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) reports
that global mobile phone subscriptions doubled over the last four years to
reach 1.5 billion by the middle of 2004. With the subsequent increases in
China and India alone, it’s fair to assume that around one-third of the
world’s population now has a mobile phone. ITU also reports that the
number of fixed lines worldwide has crossed 1.85 billion.
- The Computer Industry Almanac estimates that the worldwide
Internet population was 934 million in 2004. This is expected to increase
to 1.07 billion in 2005, 1.21 billion in 2006 and 1.35 billion in 2007.
- China Internet Network Information Centre reports that
94 million Chinese became Internet users by the end of 2004.
- Indian software industry association Nasscom says that
there will be 52.8 million Internet users in India by March 2005, estimated
on a projected subscriber base of 6.6 million. Other sources put the end-2004
Internet user population of India at 37 million.
What all these indicative statistics point to is that ICT
has expanded its reach at a pace that’s unprecedented in the history of
the civilised world. Unlike the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the
past, which took a relatively long time to increase their spheres of influence,
the ICT revolution—if one is to consider access to the World Wide Web as
a gauge—has been simply explosive. It took just four years for the Web
to reach 50 million people once it was opened to the general public; the corresponding
duration for the impact of the printing press was a century, while for radio
it was 28 years, and for TV, 13.
Despite all this, the digital divide is no frivolous myth.
Find out exactly why in Part II next time.
Val Souza, Consulting Editor
valsouza@expresscomputeronline.com
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