Digital Divide

By now, digital reality and everyday life for many people have become so thoroughly fused that it is difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle them. In this context, simple dichotomies such as “offline” and “online” fail to do justice to the diverse ways in which the “real” and virtual worlds are interpenetrated for hundreds of millions. Yet for many others—the familiar litany of the poor, the under-educated, ethnic minorities, and the socially marginalized—the Internet remains a distant, ambiguous world. Denied regular access to cyberspace by the inability to purchase a personal computer, the lack of technical skills necessary to log on, or public policies that assume their needs will be magically addressed by the market, the information have-nots living in the economically advanced world are deprived of many of the essential skills necessary for a successful or convenient life. While those with regular and reliable access to the Internet drown in a surplus of information—much of it superfluous, irrelevant, or unnecessary—those with limited access have difficulty comprehending the opportunities it offers, the savings in time and money it allows, the sheer convenience and entertainment value it provides, and the ability to acquire data from it, from bus schedules to recipes to global news.

As the uses and applications of the Internet have multiplied, the costs sustained by those denied access rise accordingly. At precisely the historical moment that contemporary capitalism has come to rely on digital technologies to an unprecedented extent, large pools of the economically disenfranchised are shut off from cyberspace. As the Internet erodes the monopolistic roles once played by the telephone and television, and as the upgrading of required skill levels steadily renders information technology skills necessary even for lower-wage service jobs, lack of access to cyberspace becomes increasingly detrimental to social mobility. Indeed, those excluded from the Internet may be more vulnerable than ever before to social forces they do not and often cannot perceive.