Although
figures can vary widely depending on who's counting, there seem to
be somewhere between 800 million and 950 million people online worldwide.
But, of
course, access is unevenly
distributed. The "digital divide" is very
much an international issue, as you might expect.
Why is this
the case? The reasons are, perhaps, obvious -- but difficult to address.
As your readings last week pointed out, access to technology is just
one of the problems. Among the others:
| TECHNOLOGY involves
issues of not only of access but also of cost, infrastructure,
innovation and corporate ownership. |
LANGUAGE has
been an issue until fairly recently. For a long time, computers
could not even display the alphabets of many other languages.
But today,
English-language sites are no longer the majority.
The
change is largely thanks to technological advances (led by an organization
called Unicode)
that enable people to read and send information in their native
languages,
even those that do not use Roman characters. This has opened up the
Internet to those who speak Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Greek
and dozens of other major languages. |
CULTURAL, SOCIAL and POLICY issues are the hardest
to address.
The
Web is, many fear, a new and powerful form of cultural imperialism
(a way for Western values -- especially ours
in the United States -- to dominate the world).
It
favors openness and global discourse … but not
all info is universally welcome in other countries.
And
it also favors capitalism, corporatism and consumerism. |
|
At
the same time, the Internet is inherently EMPOWERING. It challenges
any entity’s ability to control information,
thus potentially changing:
| Who
is able to have their voices heard. |
What
information enters the discourse about global issues -- and,
in the 21st century, all issues are, at least to some extent,
global as national boundaries become increasingly porous.
|
| What
we know about each other, both those we see as our “friends” and
those we see as our “enemies.” |
|