Digital Divide

In recent years, Digital Technology has brought about incredible changes and improvements, connecting the world like never before and making possible the free flow of information. It is now possible and very easy to share knowledge without being limited by national boundaries or language abilities. The world, as they say, has truly become a smaller place.

Thanks to this globalization process, life and business have taken a turn for the better for a wide social swath of people from Silicon Valley/Bangalorean Software Professionals to Ivory Coast Cocoa Workers to Bangladeshi Agricultural Workers to Women Weavers in Morocco to Writers in Burkina Faso to Doctors in China to Travellers in Uzbekistan to Students in the Sahara to Lonely Hearts in Spain, and so on. People - the Moroccan Weavers, to give an example - who might have had a somewhat tough time promoting their skills in their own home town can now look towards a wider, easily accessible, and better-paying international market-base. People who might have never met otherwise get the chance to get together, befriend one another, exchange ideas, even get married. You can go online to make travel plans, learn a new skill, consult with a doctor, and to do an amazing number of other things. It is actually marvellous the myriad ways in which the Internet has touched and changed modern life. The world is now a place where differing cultures and differing ideas meet, where cooperation and ability are the things that matter the most, and this can only improve the future for everyone concerned.

And yet, the sad and true fact is that it is not a brave, new world for absolutely everybody. Nearly 80 % of the world population still remains unaware of the Internet Revolution. A recent UN Human Development Report found that the total percentage of Internet Users in the developing countries of South Asia and Africa is actually lesser than that of users in Manhattan or Tokyo!

There is now a growing social, economic, and intellectual discrepancy on both the national and international level between people with access to and skills for using the new Information Technology and people without access and skills for using these resources. This discrepancy is described by the term Digital Divide.

In a speech made in Geneva, Switzerland, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said -

"People lack many things: jobs, shelter, food, health care, and drinkable water. Today, being cut off from basic telecommunications services is a hardship almost as acute as these other deprivations, and may indeed reduce the chances of finding remedies to them."

Many people in the developing nations, unfortunately, fail to see the truism of Annan's observation. The general tendency is, why spend on technology when there are more urgent issues like providing sanitation, health-care, running water, electricity, and telecommunication links? Digital Technology, it is felt, is going to benefit only the educated upper classes.

Obviously this mindset requires changing, although the issues mentioned are in no way irrelevant. In fact, without a proper infrastructure, it would be unrealistic to expect much in the way of development. Internet access, for example, is hardly going to be feasible without the telecomunication links in place. So all these things need to be considered in tandem if the growing Digital Divide between the haves and the have-nots is to be bridged to some extent - it cannot be bridged wholly anymore than the disparity between the rich and the poor can be hoped to be eliminated completely. The Infrastructure aside, there is a need for affordable hardware and software, and for making these readily available in disadvantaged areas. But, as it has been found by various experiments conducted the world over, it is not enough getting people to accept technology and providing them with the resources; they need to be imparted with the skills for using these and, in turn, must also be able to understand how to put these skills to proper use. The Internet can provide a surfeit of information that can enrich lives, yes, but to benefit, one needs to know how to sift through this vast database of knowledge and find exactly what is needed.

It is unrealistic to expect to bridge the Digital Divide in any lasting capacity unless people develop these capabilities, and the solution may lie not just in providing infrastructure and technology and imparting user skills, but, as importantly, in taking concrete steps to eradicate illiteracy and raising the bar for education.