http://www.netfreedom.org/controversy/latest/amis.asp
The Digital Divide
Introducing the digital divide debate
The phrase 'digital divide' is used by many politicians, commentators and activists. It is
the subject of numerous conferences and research papers and a growing number of government
and private sector initiatives have been set up to deal with it.
The digital divide is an amorphous term encompassing a number of discussions about inequality and the lack of access to Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). Put simply, it is the gap between the information haves and have-nots.
The discussion about the digital divide manifests itself in different ways, reflecting national and regional concerns ranging from the need for a skilled workforce to bridging racial division as well as concern about the Third World is being left behind in the implementation of ICTs.
This overview will look at various aspects of the discussion, examining the differences and the underlying themes.
One side of the debate in the UK is ensuring people have the skills to compete in the 'knowledge economy.' Speaking at the Knowledge 2000 conference held in London this March, the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair said: "The issues of technology, knowledge, education, skills, electronic commerce, are right at the forefront of how we create that new dynamic European economy which is going to bring prosperity and opportunity to everyone."
The supporters of using ICTs to encourage civic participation claim it will allow the representation of minority voices and increase the ability to participate in discussion. There is an assumption that merely making ICTs available will automatically lead to greater civic participation. However, people will only engage in civic or political activity if they feel that it offers a chance for meaningful change. The current disengagement from participation is a symptom of a general loss of faith in politics. No amount of access to ICTs scan be a substitute the absence of radical politics today.
In the US, discussion of the issue is couched in the language of race and civil rights. In one address Al Gore said: "We know that civil rights ring hollow without economic opportunity. And so we must recognise that in the Information Age, computer literacy is a fundamental civil right."
However, research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates that the racial divide is closing anyway. This research found that in 1998, 23% of blacks were online. A surge in the past year has doubled the online population of blacks. The Pew Internet & American Life Project suggests that the "growth of the online black population will outpace the growth of the online white population."
Yet, some feel that too much attention on the issue takes the focus away from the gains that have been made. David Ellington, CEO and founder of Netnoir.com, the first major black site on the Web, said: "I don't feel there is much of a divide anymore," said Ellington. "The Internet is now becoming relevant in our lives as a result of e-mail and chat sites, and African-Americans are going online in droves."
There is evidence that the divide has more to do with factors such as education and age. According to a research project released in February 2000 by Norman H. Nie and Lutz Erbring at the Stanford Institute for the Qualitative Study of Society, the digital divide is a "myth." They stated that: "By far the most important factors facilitating or inhibiting Internet access are education and age, and not income--nor race/ethnicity or gender, each of which accounts for less than a 5 percent change in rates of access and is statistically insignificant."
New technologies are initially adopted by the more affluent members of society, but eventually costs go low enough to enable mass participation. David Boaz, the vice president of the CATO Institute, in 'A Snapshot View of a Complex World' (IntellectualCapital.com, July 15, 1999) said: "When you look at the process, not the snapshot, the progress is amazing. It is sheer scaremongering to write reports about 'information haves and have-nots.' The reality is a little less exciting: have-nows and have-laters. Families that do not have computers now are going to have them in a few years."
Where the debate on the digital divide is at its most contentious is in relation to the Third World. Concern has been expressed by governments and industry leaders that the third world is being left behind in the digital stakes.
Speaking at Creating Digital Dividends, this year, Hewlett Packard executive Carly Fiorina expressed a common sentiment, saying: "We are all part of one global ecosystem. When one part of us is excluded or handicapped either through conscious discrimination or benign neglect, the rest of us will suffer."
Some campaign groups think that addressing the digital divide in the third world ignores the real problems in the region. Ann Pettifor, director of Jubilee 2000, speaking at a G8 summit in Japan this year said: "To the thousands of children in the poorest countries who die each day of hunger IT training is irrelevant. They cannot eat cybercake. The G8 are in danger of insulting African leaders who have travelled from the other side of the wealth divide to tackle the cause of that divide - which is debt."
Bill Gates speaking at Creating Digital Dividends pointedly referred delegates to the priorities of many of those living in the third world by saying: "Mothers are going to walk right up to that computer and say: 'My children are dying, what can you do?' They're not going to sit there and, like, browse eBay or something. What they want is for their children to live. Do you really have to put in computers to figure that out?"
There are many aspects to the digital divide debate. The articles exclusively commissioned by Internet Freedom from Dr Norman Lewis, Andrew Calcutt, Bobson Wong and Kimberley Heitman will all help start to unwire the digital divide.
http://www.netfreedom.org/controversy/latest/calcutt.asp
Myths and realities of the digital divide
by Andrew Calcutt, lecturer and author.
London, England -- Some people have access to Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and others do not. But does it follow that 'the digital divide' is the key demarcation of our age? Andrew Calcutt looks behind the government-sponsored attempts to counteract social exclusion by 'closing the digital divide.'
'They reflect activity by less than 5 per cent of the world's population.' So says the UN High-Level Panel on ICTs, reviewing its own figures for e-commerce and Internet traffic. The disparities are incontrovertible. As the UN report goes on to say, there are more hosts in New York than in the entire continent of Africa; more in Finland than in Latin America and the Caribbean combined.
As a rough indication of inequality, the term 'digital divide' has some merit. However, it is not a scientific measure. According to its criteria, the CEO who has not got time to send emails and values his privacy so much he refuses to carry a mobile phone, would be counted among the 'information-poor'; while the woman working in a call centre for little more than the minimum wage, appears in the list of 'information-rich.' An extreme comparison perhaps, but one which shows the poverty of measuring riches in relation to a single, technical factor. Far more realistic, surely, to record wealth in terms of the universal equivalent, money, i.e. the element into which all technologies and many other factors are ultimately convertible. Measuring their income is still the best way to find out whether people are rich or poor.
Seen in this light, the concept of 'the digital divide' is illustrative but scientifically spurious. So too are many of the policies associated with 'closing the digital divide.' They say a lot about the people who have devised them; but they do not measure up to the task which they purport to address.
The UK Department of Trade and Industry Report 'Closing the Digital Divide: information and communication technologies in deprived communities' is introduced by a member of the government who styles herself 'e-Minister' and 'Champion Minister' (as well as 'minister for Small Business and e-commerce'). This tells us that New Labour is a little too fond of neologisms (perhaps they really think that coining new terms creates new contexts). The attribution of the report to PAT 15 (Policy Action Team), which was commissioned to write it by the Social Exclusion Unit, suggests a new network of unelected, publicly-funded bodies which may even outstrip the extravagances of the National Economic Development Council and others in the sixties and seventies.
But what of the substance of the report? Its essential premise is that government-supported initiatives which provide ICT access to people in deprived areas are essential to the maintenance of the nation and to the development of the national economy. Improved access is linked with the regeneration of community and the remodelling of the workforce. As the e-Minister/Champion Minister/Minister for Small Business and e-commerce says: "To prosper nationally and to compete globally we need to empower people at the local level to become active participants in society. Social inclusion and economic success are not mutually exclusive - they are mutually reinforcing."
All this from a few ministerial boxes? If only it were so easy. Unfortunately, the minister is so keen to advance the idea of social entrepeneurship she has overlooked the syllogism underlying her hopes for government-sponsored virtual communities: ICTs can facilitate social interaction; British society is in danger of fragmenting. Therefore, ICTs will reverse this process by guaranteeing the renewal of community.
The flaw in this argument is that there is no necessary relationship between the communal potential of ICTs and the ways in which people choose to use them. Thus half a century ago both radio and TV were promoted as interactive media which would underpin social solidarity and political activity. But they have since become associated with couch potatoes and the sovereignty of the individual consumer. Likewise, the Internet was touted a decade ago as the site of the new public sphere. But trends towards the privatisation of social life have largely reformulated the Net over the past few years (the continued existence of a discussion site like this one shows the ongoing potential of the Net as the location for public debate; but that does not alter the reality of its transformation, as one critic puts it, into a digital 'mail order catalogue').
The current emphasis on the private is underlined by the way in which text messaging has taken the place of graffito as a characteristic activity of young people. Nobody wants to leave their mark in public nowadays, because the only people who live in the public sphere are the homeless. The rest of us inhabit what Wellmann calls 'networked individualism'. These are the trends which ICTs currently catalyse. The mere installation of cables and white boxes in deprived areas will not reverse them.
Similarly, we cannot expect that connecting more people to the Internet will have a galvanising effect on the economy. Despite reports of unfilled vacancies in the IT sector, the real shortage which is slowing the economy is not the dearth of knowledge workers but the lack of productive investment. As Cyberia CEO Phil Mullan has pointed out elsewhere, the widely-accepted split between the e-conomy and the rest indicates that there is not enough of a dynamic to update the economy as a whole. Whether or not a few low-grade workers enter the picture is unimportant.
Looked at as a whole, the government-sponsored initiatives for closing the digital divide amount to trying to reverse white flight by setting up car pools in inner cities. That was a race issue, not a question of automobiles. Measuring today's social questions in terms of digital technology is equally short-sighted.
Author of White Noise: contradictions in cyberculture (Macmillan: 1999), Andrew Calcutt lectures in Innovation and Communications Studies at the Docklands campus of the University of East London.
http://www.netfreedom.org/controversy/latest/wong.asp
The Relevant Internet
by Bobson Wong, Digital Freedom Network.
Newark, New Jersey, USA -- Without the Internet, my life would be very different. Since I run a human-rights organization that focuses on using the Internet, the Net is obviously central to my job. I also live in the most urbanized part of the United States, a country with half the world's online population. I have three e-mail accounts that I use regularly, four telephone numbers (including a mobile phone), and access to three Web sites. At work, I surf the Web on a T-1 line, and at home, I have unlimited Internet access. Clearly, the Net is an integrated part of my life. A friend of mine who is a public school teacher in a major American city has a different day-to-day experience with the Internet. Lisa (not her real name) teaches in a racially mixed school with many children from low-income families. As an avowed technophile who uses the Net frequently at home, she wants her students to be computer-literate. However, Lisa's problem isn't that her classrooms lack computers. "I have computers in all my classrooms," she once told me. "But my classes are overcrowded and I'm overworked."
Lisa's complaint encapsulates the real problem faced by those trying to narrow the digital divide in the US ?how to make the Internet relevant enough to people's lives so that they'll want to get online.
In the US, Internet access is more affordable and widespread than in other parts of the world. Americans generally pay a flat-rate fee per local telephone call, a much cheaper alternative to the per-minute fees incurred by telephone users in the UK and most other countries. Over 94 percent of Americans have a telephone, and about half the country's population uses the Internet. This is a stark contrast to most of the rest of the world. The US has more Internet users than all of Asia, which has over half the world's population. There are more Internet users in the US state of Texas than in all of Africa.
Of course, not everyone in the US has Internet access. There is a noticeable divide among racial and ethnic lines. According to a new study by the US Department of Commerce, Asian Americans, who make up about four percent of the US population, have the highest rate of Internet penetration. Almost 57 percent of Asian American households have Internet access, compared to 46 percent of white households. At the other end of the spectrum, only about one-quarter of blacks and Hispanics, the two largest minority groups in the US, have Internet access. Some gaps along racial and ethnic lines have persisted. The gap between Internet access rates between black and white households and between white and Hispanic households has actually increased since 1998.
Differences along income and education lines are also large. Those in urban areas, those who earn more money and those with more education are far more likely to own computers and have Internet access. One study found that 70 percent of households headed by someone with a post-graduate education had Internet access, compared to only 30 percent of households headed by someone with only a high school education.
Overall, these differences have shrunk in the last two years. Several studies indicate that Internet access among most groups of Americans is increasing rapidly across income, education, ethnicity, location, and age groups. While the digital divide will not be eliminated anytime soon and some gaps have even widened, the US has made considerable progress in bringing Americans of all groups online. Nonprofit organisations, businesses, and Government have played an important role in narrowing the digital divide. In many cases, they have worked together in innovative partnerships. For example, a program sponsored by a major company is bringing students and families at Lisa's school into the digital age for free. Students at her school are getting computers with Internet access installed in their homes, while Lisa and her fellow teachers are getting laptops. Teachers and parents can get training on how to use computers. With a companion Web site, parents will be able to check what homework is assigned to each class. Programs like this that get the Internet into classrooms, offices, and homes are an important first step in bridging the digital divide.
However, eliminating the digital divide will require more than increasing the supply of Internet access. It will also require increasing the demand for Internet access by encouraging the development of content that is relevant to all users. The non-profit organisation Children's Partnership found that low-income communities get only limited benefits from improved Internet access because of a lack of cultural information on the Net, literacy and language barriers among low-income users, and a lack of online cultural diversity. Online content is primarily designed for Net users with discretionary money to spend and an average or advanced literacy level. Only 17 percent of African Americans surveyed by the Pew Internet and American Life Project believe that most people can be trusted, compared to 34 percent of whites. Because African Americans are less trusting and more concerned about privacy, they are less likely to participate in high-trust activities like online auctions or give their credit card number to an online vendor. In a country where African Americans have suffered centuries of discrimination and where even today they are often singled out by police to be stopped and searched, such distrust is not surprising. Most Internet content doesn't address the concerns of minorities and low-income people, but this should change as more people in these groups get Internet access.
The disappearance of the online gender gap shows that providing relevant Internet content is important in eliminating the digital divide. Two recent reports concluded that the percentage of men and women online in the US differs by less than a percentage point, a clear reversal of the male-dominated Internet that persisted as recently as two years ago. The Internet market research firms Media Metrix and Jupiter Communications found that in the last year, the biggest increase in Internet users came in girls aged 12 to 17, who were attracted by chat rooms and Web sites for popular teen magazines, fashion styles, and rock bands. Another group whose online presence increased dramatically is women over the age of 55, who were attracted to genealogy, health, and other sites relevant to them. When people find Internet content that can affect their lives, they will be more likely to get online.
In the end, we need to keep the digital divide in perspective. Many people who aren't online now have far more serious issues to think about than getting online. Nearly 21 million Americans over age 18 are below the US government's poverty line. About 44 million adults ?over one-fifth of the world's population ?lack the reading and writing skills necessary to function in everyday life. The digital divide is not just a gap in technology. It's also a gap in education and economic class. Only by addressing these gaps can the digital divide truly be eliminated.
Bobson Wong is executive director of the Digital Freedom Network (DFN), which promotes human rights around the world by developing new methods of activism with Internet technology and by providing an online voice to those attacked simply for expressing themselves.
Digital Freedom Network (DFN) can be found at http://dfn.org
http://www.netfreedom.org/controversy/latest/lewis.asp
Whose Digital Divide?
by Norman Lewis, Director GAP21.
London, England -- With the explosion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), governments and international institutions like the United Nations and the World Bank have become increasingly obsessed with the 'digital divide': the gap between those who have access to these technologies and those who do not. A divide that exists between and within the countries of the world.
At one level the existence of huge disparities in access to these technologies across the world is clear: The industrialised countries with only 15% of the world's population contain 88% of all Internet users ?South Asia, home to a fifth of the world's population, has less than 1% of Internet users. There are more Internet Service Providers in New York City than in the whole of Africa. Indeed, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) calculate that at the present average speed of telecommunications spread, Côte d'Ivoire and Bhutan, for example, would take until 2050 to achieve the teledensity that Germany and Singapore have today. Never mind access to basic telephony, when one considers that purchasing a computer in the USA costs a month's wages while in Bangladesh it is the equivalent of eight year's income, the scale of the divide appears gigantic, indeed as a 'chasm' rather than a 'divide'.
Thus, at this level the debate about this 'divide' is obvious and addresses the underlying concern, the existence of inequality. In the developed world, however, there is nothing new in this debate. The existence of inequality is as old as the market itself. Indeed, every major technological revolution has been accompanied by disparities in uptake and social dissemination. This is simply the result of income differentials and the affordability of the technologies. In the context of the 'digital divide' within the developed countries of the world, historical precedent suggests that far from addressing a 'chasm', we are merely experiencing a transitional phase. At this stage disparities in income and the affordability of the technologies has resulted in a differential uptake and use of the new technologies. Indeed, historical precedent suggests that in time, this 'divide' will all but disappear.
The interesting point to highlight in passing is that this technological change is being accompanied by enormous angst and trepidation over what history should suggest ought to be a very relaxed approach to the operation of the market mechanism. After all, when the motor car was invented and became an essential part of modern society, there was no debate or huge policy initiatives addressing the inequalities underlying the 'car divide' then, or indeed, today. Even the question of universal access to telephone networks ?a reality we now regard as a fundamental human right ?only became a reality in many OECD countries in the late 1970s and 1980s. The penetration of telephones in working class and farm households in France under George Pompidou, and in Germany under Willy Brandt, for example, was merely in the single digits during the 1960s. But while subsidies and the break up of monopolies helped to ensure this outcome, the key point is that this was not informed by a public debate about the dangers of 'divides', social exclusion or social failure.
Yet, everything changes when the debate about the 'digital divide' shifts to the gap between the developed and developing countries. Almost every project or programme initiated by the governments of developing nations and international institutions to address the 'divide', stipulate that success is predicated on creating the right environment within which the market mechanism can operate freely. But while deregulation, privatisation and establishing the right regulatory and legal framework are important to attracting much-needed foreign investment; it is simply assumed that the market, left to its own devices, will help solve the 'divide'. But is this the case?
The structural adjustment programmes initiated in the 1980s and 1990s by institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have systematically failed to reduce the developing world's crippling debt. Furthermore, despite educating many developing country governments in the strictures of the market, very little foreign investment has flowed into these parts of the world. So, while there has been some development in this part of the world (reduced infant mortality and improved adult literacy rates), massive and glaring discrepancies remain at the most basic level despite these programmes. According to the UNDP's Human Development Report 2000, for example, 1 billion people are still without safe water and more than 2.4 billion without basic sanitation ?roughly 8 times as many as have access to the Internet across the world (depending on whose figures you use). But surprisingly, a moratorium on the developing world's crippling debt is never seriously entertained as probably the key to the short-term dissemination of ICTs in this part of the world.
Yet, the developing world is being urged and cajoled into embracing ICTs as the priority if they are to participate in the 'digital age'. There is a fundamental problem with this besides the inevitably stupid and destructive counter position along the lines of the Monty Python 'Life of Brian' sketch between basic human needs and ICTs; 'What has the Internet ever done for us?' More precisely, 'how can the Internet deliver clean water and sanitation to my village?' Essentially, forces external to these societies, forces that do not address the developing world's logical or long-term development priorities, are setting their development agendas.
In many ways, this may appear counter-intuitive. After all, ICTs are changing the world we live in and like it or not, we all have to join the bandwagon or fall by the wayside. There is nothing new in recognising how technological development impacts upon the world and forces everyone to adapt or die. However, the imposition of this agenda is more than the recognition of market inevitabilities. In reworking development priorities, what is being imposed is the need for externalities and the assumptions these entail: namely, the notion that ICTs are special and contain universal 'healing powers' that can drag the developing world into the 21st Century. ICTs are indeed wondrous things. But they are merely tools. Moreover, for ICTs to have social benefits many things have to be in place as well. For example, it is all very well suggesting that 'm-commerce' (mobile access to the Internet) will allow the developing world to 'leap-frog' previous infrastructural stages of development, and thus allow it to compete on world markets, but the 'm' in 'm-commerce' refers to mobile phones ?phones that run on battery power. How do you conduct your business over a cell phone when you live in an area where there is no electricity and thus no way of re-charging a battery?
But the development agenda being established by the 'digital divide' debate contains another important consideration, which ironically represents the lowering of people's expectations of what ICTs represent. For example, literature proliferates on identifying the relationship between the global and the local and includes as diverse subjects as gender and race equality, cultural development, design and user interfaces, values, e-literacy, education and content creation. While the notion of developing local content is attractive and is happening, the idea that this can become the basis of sustainable growth is fanciful. The Internet is a global medium. Indeed, probably its most important element is the cooperative creativity it inherently develops and demands ?an extension of the global division of labour. But the ICTs being envisaged in the development agenda are being conceived of in the most narrow and parochial terms ?as the 'hand looms' of the 21st Century. Rather than breakout of the poverty trap, this application of ICTs will merely reproduce the developing world's structural dependence and inequality ?the reality that has given rise to this debate in the first place.
Dr Norman Lewis, Director GAP21 and Head of Research, cScape Strategic Internet Services Ltd.
http://www.netfreedom.org/controversy/latest/heitman2.asp
What Price: the Digital Divide?
by Kimberley Heitman, Electronic Frontiers Australia.
Perth, Australia -- With the rollout of railways, towns without access to rail links declined as neighbouring towns reaped the benefits of cheaper transportation. Now that the Internet has proved its worth as a ubiquitous medium of communication and exchange, it's time to correct the deficiencies in the market-driven rollout of Internet access to date.
At present, access to the Internet requires a stable telecommunications system and an expensive set of hardware. Satellite delivery in remote areas adds to capital costs, making Internet access too expensive for many. The machines available for Internet access are generally high-end computers, with more capacity than is required merely to sustain an Internet connection.
Some innovations in set-top boxes have the capacity to lower barriers for entry - a dedicated Internet device may be considerably cheaper than a full computer system. Using a television set as a monitor and online storage rather than a hard drive can reduce costs, so too can the use of freeware for the operating system and applications. However, even a cost near US$ 200 is beyond the means of the poor, let alone the average person in the Third World.
The announcement by the U.K. Government that 1000 obsolete computers will be offered to the public is laudable, but is a small pilot programme that would not scale to reach all those on the wrong side of the digital divide. The more computers are recycled, the higher the likelihood that service and repair issues may frustrate novice users. In looking at similar schemes in Australia the Internet industry has urged instead that obsolete computers from Government or industry be 're-tooled' rather than 'recycled.'
Expenses such as fitting the computers with a licenced operating system, or censorware, can cause the costs to blow out notwithstanding that the base price is zero.
The digital divide includes the poor, but also includes disabled users. Trapped on the wrong side of the divide are those who cannot use web sites that do not translate text to voice, or where colour-blindness makes the web site's colour choices unreadable. It is appalling that web designers do not fulfil their legal obligations not to discriminate against disabled people. A recent case in Australia is illustrative - a disabled person took the official Olympic Games web site to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to force the site owner to change the layout and templates to be more usable by disabled people. While the Commission upheld the complaint, the web site refused to comply, claiming it would take a year and over US$1million to change the site. By contrast, the applicant estimated it would cost US$ 15,000 and less than two weeks to make the site usable.
To tackle the digital divide is not merely a progressive political policy, it is a means of maximising human capital and providing a future for those presently disadvantaged. All of us would know of examples of ways in which a passion for computing or the Net has led to a stellar career for young people, often including young people with a disability or difficulty finding work in other fields. The Internet is a meritocracy that the disabled can excel in, especially freed of the tyranny of first impressions by the anonymity of email and online work.
Since no Government can seriously commit to giving every teenager and adult a complete computer system, or even free Internet access, the use of Government funding must be carefully directed. Setting up community resource centres, or upgrading facilities at public institutions and libraries can go a long way towards providing some Internet access for all, and a testbed for the computing aspirations of the have-nots.
Volunteers can achieve much - service clubs and associations can co-operate with educational institutions to provide training and support for computer users. This involves little in the way of Government funding, but does require Government support for the use of educational facilities out of school hours. Otherwise, Internet associations and user groups represent the best source of free information and guidance. In the absence of coordinated Government action it may well fall upon such groups to provide the help and education that should be part of everyone's education. The digital divide is also a function of the generation gap - persons over the age of 30 are unlikely to have received any training on use of the Net outside limited opportunities in a well-wired business. If the whole of society is to embrace the new paradigms of the online economy, the Government needs a strategy to get older novices online too.
However, industry may be able to help with the costs of Internet access by making available cheap Internet packages. In the U.K., with timed local calls, there is little opportunity for a free service to be offered due to telecommunications costs. However, in countries that have unmetered local calls, local Internet groups can work with ISPs to provide cheap accounts using domestic or peered traffic, with web access serviced by proxies. The costs of a full-service Internet connection may be prohibitive, but a timed service using mostly local traffic can be profitable for an ISP at a very cheap price. For example, there are plans for the WA Internet Association to offer access for as little as US$3.60 per month, and this model will work wherever there is unused capacity on fixed-price links. I'll leave it to the imagination of the reader as to how such an outcome could arise in a timed local call environment, but clearly access to the Internet through means other than dial-up telephony would be indicated.
In Australia, the trade union movement has established a cheap hardware/access package for approximately US$5.50 per week - see http://www.virtualcommunities.com.au/. As always, the people who can't afford to buy something upfront end up paying more. However, a low entry point and full support makes this option attractive to many who haven't been able to afford for their households to be online.
Activists are right to be enthusiastic about the prospects for education, training and a reversal of urbanisation from greater uptake of the Net. We have already seen, with the growth of the anti-globalisation movement online, that the Internet offers unparalleled opportunities for disadvantaged groups to lead policy debates and mobilise support. However, while access to the Net remains a luxury, even in wealthy nations, the potential for dramatic social change is reduced. While there are more Internet users in a single American city than the whole of Africa social disadvantage in the Third World is exacerbated by the digital divide, there is scope for radical policy and determined attempts to redress the imbalance.
In the future, the digital have-nots may cease to regard their isolation from the online economy as a personal failing and instead see it as a symptom of social imbalance. While top-rank network engineers may be enjoying the skills scarcity which makes a trade more lucrative than a profession, this is a sign that education has lagged behind society's need for skilled network staff. Social imbalances in the more traditional trades and professions have been addressed by scholarships, traineeships and Government subsidies for students. It remains to be seen whether the online economy will learn the lessons of the past and work towards spreading the skills and teaching all of the next generation that which will be required for them to participate fully in an online environment.
Kimberley Heitman is Chairman, Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc. Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc can be found at http://www.efa.org.au