I’ve spent much of my working life engaging in one way or another with what is generally termed the “Digital Divide” (defined as the “divide between those who have Internet access and those who do not”).
The broad area in which I work and which I have contributed to building – Community Informatics – arguably had its origins and its development framed by the concepts of the “Digital Divide” (DD); and in particular through the Community Informatics challenge to those concerned with the DD to address issues of “effective use” of the Internet as a means to achieve community enablement and empowerment beyond the simple availability of “access”.
However, of late I’ve begun questioning whether the notion of the DD is any longer of value. I’ve begun to wonder whether the continuing visibility and attention being given to the DD even after 20 or so years may in fact be a diversion and distraction from the broader issues of social equity and social justice that energized my own involvement with Community Informatics.
What is interesting of course, is that the DD and “access” discussion which has been around since almost the very beginnings of the public Internet, has now been revived and is becoming a central element in the emerging (and highly controlled) policy framework for Global Internet Governance. Surely everything that could possibly be said and advocated in this area has already been said and repeatedly over many years and with many iterations.
10. The importance of access to open, secure and stable communication infrastructures around the world was stressed. It is of equal importance that developing countries can fully connect to the internet economy. Delegates underlined the importance to include the need for universal Internet access in the post 2015 agenda.
(DRAFT Chairperson’s Statement GLOBAL CONFERENCE ON CYBERSPACE 2015, the Hague, Netherlands)
The problem in “overcoming the DD” surely isn’t a matter of awareness raising or information sharing as seems to be the only objective and possible outcome for these events. In fact most of these discussions are of the “feel good” form of ritual incantations meant more to indicate a general aura of sympathy for an issue via the the conference, panel, Commission, or whatever than any intention of actually engaging in meaningful action or committing to resource consuming outputs.
Simply repeating the desirability of overcoming the DD for advantaging the rural and the poor, enhancing the position of Less Developed Countries, gender equality, etc. etc. without at the same time tackling how these social objectives will in practice be achieved (moving, as Community Informatics has been arguing for some 20 years from “access” to “effective use”) may give oneself and one’s constituencies the satisfaction of being on the side of the angels, but accomplishes little if anything.
And surely after 20 years of unrelenting rhetorical attacks on the DD it might be time for people of good-will to declare victory and move on, recognizing the DD approach for what it is–a fine “cyber” example of the “welfare dependency model”, where we beneficent and generous (rich and from the global North) folks are going to give those poor and needy people living on the “other side of the Digital Divide” some sort of (pale and poorly equipped) version of the Internet in return for which they will be suitably and demonstrably grateful and in our eternal (figurative or even quite material) debt).
Further having done this, having passed the pre-canned resolution, included the standard paragraph in the outcome document, taken the necessary bow in the direction of social concern—the attitude is clearly “can we now get on to the serious matters at hand” which of course have nothing to do with ensuring that poor people or even those of us who aren’t on one or another of the various Internet gravy trains get a fair shake out of the Internet.
The challenges to overcome the DD have been significantly, even wildly, successful. From a standing start some 20 or so years ago there are now in excess of 3.1 billion individuals able to access (if not “effectively use”) the current Internet. Perhaps of even more importance, issues of Internet access (but again not of use) are being taken up by significant corporate and governmental forces (both national and inter-governmental).
Companies such as Facebook and Google are in the process of launching and implementing innovative infrastructure oriented projects (involving balloons, drones, cabling etc.) to increase those numbers into the next billions. Their intent of course, is not idealistic but rather a clear recognition that they benefit significantly from the “network effect”. The more people with internet access the better will be their advertising and data/information capture/resale businesses even if those numbers include among the poorest and most remote who equally can be mined for data and micro-revenues both now and for the future. This evidently is sufficient to justify the infrastructure investments that these companies reportedly are undertaking.
Certain governments, notably the US also see extending connectivity as being in their geo-political and economic interests by tying ever wider swathes of humanity into their version of Internet promulgated values such as “Internet Freedom”, providing them and their ideological spin-meisters and spooks an unchecked pipeline into (and out of) the inner thoughts and actions of whoever in the world might be of interest, and in-passing of course, giving a very significant leg up to US dominated e-commerce activities. (An even casual observation of how the US has attempted in the past and is now promoting at full steam the extension of Internet “access” into Cuba as a platform for extending various forms of control errr “Internet Freedoms” into the very heart of its erstwhile enemy, is a very revealing window on the underlying intention of these processes.)
And as well it is hard to a find a country anywhere that hasn’t bought into the meme promoted by the USG, the Internet corporations and the various global commissions and think tanks–that only through the broadest base of Internet (and particularly broadband) connectivity can their citizens progress and become sufficiently “innovative” to survive economically in the 21st century. The effect of this is that country after country having privatized their telecommunications systems have been in the process of creating for the emerging Internet infrastructure, platform and service providers (particularly mobile operators) highly concessionary tax and spectrum costing regimes all in the name of extending access and thus promoting “innovation”.
While certainly there are issues in how (and where) these corporate and government driven anti-DD processes are being deployed (and particularly in such things as Facebook’s zero rating initiatives), it should be recognized that the scale of resources and the direction of much of this investment particularly in broadband and mobile infrastructure is quite consistent with the arguments promoting simple, passive, one way “access” to the Internet (for ensuring the widest possible numbers of potential e-consumers) that has been the agenda for so many DD warriors for decades.
Nothing wrong with all that, but sigh, since we’ve heard it all so many times before what is the point of repeating the bland DD generalities at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) or the NetMundial Initiative (NMI) one more time…
Hmmm… maybe given the pervasiveness of the rhetoric and sheer numbers of the empty pro forma pronouncements something else might be going on. When the IGF and the NMI take on the DD as priorities could it be that the corporate sector and the Developed Country governments which dominate these forums are trying to fill the Internet policy space and the Internet policy agenda’s of sympathetic governments, civil society and people of good will with an active misdirection—a distraction pointing in one direction while making sure that we don’t look in another.
In fact, given the studied avoidance (and even, it has been rumoured) active suppression of divergent approaches to the discussion of social equity issues in, for example, the IGF it would appear that the Internet policy establishment is hoping to avoid for as long possible addressing the emergent and rather more politically explosive issues concerning social justice on the Internet having to do with how the benefits (and costs) of Internet use are being distributed and mal-apportioned within societies and between nations globally.
There is a clear reluctance to address the critical social and social justice issues emerging out of the enormous transformative drive of the Internet–accelerating income inequality, Internet supported loss of “good jobs”, the mad rush to the bottom in a range of employment areas which are shifting to the global Internet platforms, the loss of health and safety protections in the newly emerging forms of employment contracting, tax dodging by companies such as Google and Apple, growing gaps between Internet haves and have not’s in Developing countries and Developed countries alike. In place of confronting these issues discussions are being directed/re-directed to the endless repetitive discussions of “access” and the DD which in the cold light of day have the clear appearance of being direct supports for and subsidies to the Google, Facebook, and Amazon business models and to the drive for neo-liberal ideological and policy dominance from the US State Department and its allies in the OECD and elsewhere.
So please, can we once and for all drop the DD posturing and either address the real issues of social justice that are emerging in, on and through the Internet or be transparent with the obvious reality that the Internet overlords and their academic, technical community and civil society hirelings want nothing more in their various gatherings and pronouncements, than to get on with the business of figuring out how to make the rich richer and the rest of us grin and bear it while thanking the 1% for the privilege.
BTW, for anyone who is interested, while the DD model of extending Internet access was a poor substitute for really enabling communities with the Internet even in the early days (as multiple failed top down community internet projects can attest) a new model of bottom-up, self-directed, mesh wifi community networking and Internet access is spreading rapidly throughout remote parts of Europe and elsewhere, The basis of this model was pioneered in certain parts of remote and rural Spain where commercial companies refused to go because it was unprofitable. The model links community members to community members, providing a sophisticated but easy to install and maintain technology platform, while putting in place a collaborative/cooperative governance structure. The system has since been evolving towards resolving the DD through grassroots based collaborative and cooperative mesh networks and without either the (welfarist) dependency of most DD programs or the consumer lock-in of the commercial Internet infrastructure developments.
john j. horvath
April 15, 2015
Hi Mike,
Yes indeed! As Tolstoy put it: The rich will do anything for the poor, but get off their [the poor] backs!”
I commend you for your insights on the matter of the Digital Divide and laud you for your signal toward where better conceptual and practical prospects might lie.
It is good to see warranted hope after what seems to many nothing but despair.
I am with you: despair is not something we want to leave our children as a legacy.
We want politics, passion, action, in the service of at least humanity and creation itself.
Thanks,
Best regards,
John J. Horvath
Michael Gurstein
April 15, 2015
Thanks John!
J. Van Leeuwen
April 15, 2015
Fix or build.
Fix what we don’t want, or build what we want.
A difference in purpose and perspective that can lead to profoundly different outcomes.
Michael Gurstein
April 16, 2015
Indeed… But with this one we have been trying to “fix” for 20 years or so with some but limited and selective success. Maybe time to try some intensive building.
lincoln dahlberg
April 16, 2015
Spot on once again Michael, in my opinion, you have articulated what I’ve been feeling for years. Very inspiring, makes me think a way in the future to get back to my interest from years ago in water-politics and other social justice issues via my interest on digital democracy rhetoric: the latter largely operating ideologically or as quick fix to obscure or seem to answer the former. i have just completed my final draft for a paper that you might be interested in that parallels your concerns with the DD field, I have attached for your interest… should be coming out in The Communication Review… final acceptance pending in next few days. thanks again and bestLincolnÂ
Michael Gurstein
April 16, 2015
Thanks Lincoln, I’ll look forward to reading it.
Mike Zajko
April 16, 2015
Thanks for the thought-provoking post. I tend to think about how tenable some of our internet-related concepts are going to be given where society seems to be headed. Given how ridiculous a lot of “cyber” talk is sounding these days, and the theoretical trend in academia away from the real/virtual distinction, I wonder how much sense “the digital” is going to make as some sort of separate category in five or ten years. I worry that we’ll see no end of shallow technological and corporate fixes for our social problems, but these might no longer be framed as access to ICTs. Perhaps the underlying social inequalities (under the DD) will just be recognized through common sense, as any effort to address inequality will inevitably have a digital component.
Michael Gurstein
April 16, 2015
Very good observations Mike and I completely agree with the trends you are pointing to. As the digital and the Internet become more pervasive and ubiquitous we will stop seeing “digital inequalities” and simply see “inequalities”.
Aldo de Moor
April 16, 2015
I agree that there is a strong lobby for diverting attention away from much more politically explosive “effective use”-issues. However, could another reason for safely keeping the focus on technical “access” simply be that it is much easier to quantify and thus get a pseudo-grip on by decision and budget makers?
Could we as a CI community perhaps contribute by developing more usable monitoring and evaluation-frameworks and standards that capture the essence of ***socio***-technical effective use-aspects, without those frameworks becoming statistical straightjackets? They could be useful instruments for the good-willing bureaucrats and corporate executives surely out there who share our CI values.
Michael Gurstein
April 16, 2015
Sounds like a good idea to me… Thanks Aldo!
Kentaro Toyama
April 16, 2015
Love it! I agree completely. To the extent that technology amplifies underlying human forces, an even spread of technology (i.e., “closing the digital divide”) only amplifies inequality. With respect to social divides, technology isn’t a bridge, but a jack. (For more along this line, see http://geekheresy.org)
Michael Gurstein
April 16, 2015
Tks Kentaro 🙂
M
Ekendra
April 17, 2015
Agree and very nice observation, Michael.
The degree of have and have-not has seriously attached no strings even to the poorer /3rd world countries in sense like Internet and ultimately the digital divide. Most of the countries, like Nepal, are lost in so called development aspect called “development” – the poverity empowerment, and they have forgotton to address digital divide at the same time. When the poverity is gone, digital divide is still there. Hence, divide is always dividing the population scenario.
Michael Gurstein
April 17, 2015
Absolutely Ekendra, the DD is not the problem (or the solution).
Andy Williamson
April 17, 2015
(reposted from CI Research Email list)…
Thanks Mike, a very good perspective on this problem. I gave up on DD as a concept some time ago because, in a policy setting in Europe at least, it’s long been counter-productive.
First is the problem that the closer to 100% you get, the harder and more expensive to convert that next 1%. Second and more importantly for me is that politicians and policy makers are very good at quoting statistics on access but this almost entirely misses the point.
It’s well established in the UK that the (about) 15% who aren’t online equally either don’t want to be, can’t afford to be or can’t get access. There is a lot of research on this 15%. What is not understood at all well in policy circles is what the remaining 85% looks like… the focus
on those that don’t have access has led to dearth of policy and research on effective use. Clearly it’s a continuum and to say that we have a digital nation because 85% has internet access is naïve and dangerous. Access is not equal to effective use.
Whilst I don’t think policy or practice should lose sight of the access deficit, I find it much more productive for us to position the network as core public-asset infrastructure, to establish a right to access and then to focus on the effective use once people are
connected in terms of digital literacy etc.
Andy
Michael Gurstein
April 17, 2015
Excellent comments Andy thanks, with which I certainly agree.
Garth Graham
April 17, 2015
At first sight, I recognized that the digital divide was technological determinism. I never did pay it very much attention. I always saw the word “bridging” in the phrase ‘bridging the digital divide” as a term that implied an engineering approach to solving problems of social change. On the other hand, I have always kept in mind the need address digital inclusion, and the importance of enhancing local choice to community development. In fact, it has always been a puzzle to me as to why the community informatics community and the digital inclusion community don’t seem to have all that much interaction or overlap.
I have reluctantly come to realize that it’s because of Internet enabled corporations like Google, Facebook, etc., that the Internet still exists. Their business plans need its global reach, its interoperability, its collaborative methods, and its openness to succeed. The threat to the power of nation states that the Internet represents is so great that, if it weren’t for the presence of those corporations defending the properties essential to the Internet’s existence, nation states would have already destroyed it. I’m tempted to call that the practice of effective use.
To me, it feels something like the ambiguities involved in understanding the current state of the art of Internet evolution resemble Schrödinger’s cat. We don’t currently know whether it’s alive or dead, and we won’t know until we see that we’ve putting it in a box, open it, and take a look. On the other hand, the political threat to nation states represented by civil society is negligible. But using the politics of Internet Governance as a means to the end of the politics of social justice looks like just one more effort at boxing to me.
Aluta
November 11, 2015
This is exactly the reason why I recommend the adoption of a CI policy for South Africa because I have since realised that the attempts on bridging the digital divide tend to be marginalised with poor planning, resource allocation and little consideration for the community real/felt needs. I am of the view that the inclusion of the digital divide statements in some policies or strategies will not deal with the issue of capabilities or effective usage that will translate into a meaningful socio-economic change.
Michael Gurstein
November 12, 2015
Tks Aluta, well said.