Online Democracy: Digital Divide

by Ben Heine

What it is

“Digital Divide” refers to the gap between those who benefit from digital technology and those who do not. It took digital-divide researchers a whole decade to figure out that the real issue is not so much about access to digital technology but about the benefits derived from it. Examining the situation more closely, it turns out that upper-to-middle classes have high-quality access to digital technology because the profit motive pushes technologists to work hard at creating “solutions” designed specifically for them. In this equation, however, the poor are ignored because the assumption is that designing solutions for them will not be profitable. The result is that even where the poor are provided access to digital technology, it is low-quality. Furthermore, the digital technology they do have access to is often of a design that ends up being harmful rather than beneficial. This, in turn, widens the digital divide.

Consider, for the example, cyber cafés. Years ago, many pointed to their spread as an example demonstrating that the digital divide was shrinking. But when a local youth in a Cambodia village ignores his school work and instead spends his evenings playing violent video games at a local cyber café, he is not really benefiting from digital technology. Thus giving to the poor digital technology that has been designed for the rich may actually add to the causes of poverty and accelerate the exodus of the rural poor into cities already bursting at the seams.

The new view is that closing the digital divide will be most effectively achieved through a two-pronged approach, one direct and the other indirect: The direct approach will be for governments and businesses to work together to change the incentives that shape digital markets. The indirect approach will be for them to team up on e-government digital technology initiatives that extend rural health care and quality education to the poor. Through these two approaches, the poor will be able to reap many of the same benefits from digital technology now derived by the wealthy.