Origins of the term
Initially referring to the gap in ownership of computers between certain ethnic groups, the term came into usage in the mid-1990s, appearing in several news articles and political speeches. President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore both used the term in a 1996 speech in Knoxville, Tennessee. Larry Irving, a former United States head of the National Telecommunications Infrastructure Administration (NTIA) at the Department of Commerce, Assistant Secretary of Commerce and technology adviser to the Clinton Administration, noted that a series of NTIA surveys were "catalysts for the popularity, ubiquity, and redefinition" of the term, and he used the term in a series of later reports. During the George W. Bush Administration, the NTIA reports tended to focus less on the availability of the necessary hardware, more on Internet access, broadband in particular, and the disparity of access between the developed and developing worlds.
In 1999, Rev. Jesse Jackson compared the digital divide to modern day "apartheid.” He also founded the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Jackson also started the Wall Street Project which was aimed at opening access to corporate America for minorities and women. Rev. Jackson felt that if Silicon Valley tech companies extended themselves to minorities through employment and opportunity, the digital and educational gap would begin to close. He stated that hiring more women and minorities would enhance the current economic, social and educational state of the country and the world.
There is considerable accountable literature on the subject (info) that predates common usage of the term, thus it is more of a "new label" for what was already a distinct concept.
Current usage
There are several definitions of the Term. Bharat Mehra defines it simply as the troubling gap between those who use computers and the Internet and those who do not..
More recently, some have used the term to refer to gaps in broadband network access. The term can mean not only unequal access to computer hardware, but also inequalities between groups of people in the ability to use information technology fully.
Given the range of criteria used to assess the various technological disparities between groups/nations, and lack of data on some aspects of usage, the exact nature of the digital divide is both contextual and debatable. Lisa Servon argued in 2002 that the digital divide is a symptom of a larger and more complex problem -- that of persistent poverty and inequality. Mehra (2004), identifies socioeconomic status, income, educational level, and race among other factors associated with technological attainment, or the potential of the Internet to improve everyday life for those on the margins of society and to achieve greater social equity and empowerment.
The conclusion from the various existing definitions of the digital divide is that the nature of the divide, and the question if it is closing or widening, depends on the particular definition chosen. Based on the theory of the diffusion of innovations through social networks, a common framework can be set up to distinguish the main approaches researchers have taken to conceptualize the digital divide. All kinds of studies and approaches to the digital divide can be classified into these four categories:
WHO (level of analysis): individuals vs. organizations/communities, vs. societies/countries/ world regions;
with WHICH characteristics (attributes of nodes and ties): income, education, geography, age, gender, or type of ownership, size, profitability, sector, etc.;
connects HOW (level digital sophistication): access vs. usage vs. impact;
to WHAT (type of technology): phone, Internet, computer, digital TV, etc.
The chosen definition of the digital divide has far-reaching consequences with immediate practical relevance, and should therefore not be seen as a yet another intellectual quarrel of sole academic interest.
Evolution
Typical measurements of inequality distribution used to describe the digital divide are the Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient. In the Lorenz curve, perfect equality of Internet usage across nations is represented by a 45-degree diagonal line, which has a Gini coefficient of zero. Perfect inequality gives a Gini coefficient of one. However, the question of whether or not the digital divide is growing or closing is difficult to answer.
The Canadian document Bridging the digital divide: An opportunity for growth for the 21st century includes examples of these measures. Figures 2.4 and 2.5 in the document show a trend of growing equality from 1997 to 2005 with the Gini coefficient decreasing. However, these graphs do not show detailed analysis of specific income groups. The progress represented is predominantly of the middle-income groups when compared to the highest income groups. The lowest income groups continue to decrease their level of equality in comparison to the high income groups. Therefore, there is still a long way to go before the digital divide will be eliminated.
Divide and education
One area of significant focus was school computer access. In the 1990s, better resourced schools were much more likely to provide their students with regular computer access; and, at the end of the decade, these schools were much more likely to have internet access.
In the context of schools which have consistently been involved in discussion of the divide, current formulations focus more on how (and whether) students use computers, rather than simply whether there are computers or Internet connections. Public libraries and afterschool programs have also been shown to be important access and training locations for disadvantaged youth.
The E-Rate program in the United States (officially the Schools and Libraries Program of the Universal Service Fund), authorized in 1996 and implemented in 1997, directly addressed the technology gap between rich and poor schools by allocating money from telecom taxes to poor schools without technology resources. Though the program faced criticism and controversy in its methods of disbursement, E-Rate has been credited with increasing the overall number of public classrooms with Internet access from 14% in 1996 to 95% in 2005. Recently, discussions of a digital divide in school access have broadened to include technology related skills and training in addition to basic access to computers and Internet access.
Technology offers a unique opportunity to extend learning support beyond the classroom, a somewhat difficult attainment until recent years. The variety of functions that the Internet can serve for the individual user makes it "unprecedentedly malleable" to the user’s current needs and purposes.
Access to technology is further divided within schools according to socio-economic status (SES). The upper SES maintains access to technology at home, whereas the lower SES children are limited to technology access only at school. With the non-equitable availability of technology outside of the classroom, there will continue to be a divide among student groups.
Providing schools with technology is not sufficient to close the digital divide. Teachers must receive the appropriate training in order to use technology effectively and to increase student learning.
Although education could be used as a tool to close the "digital gap", closing this gap will not completely close the achievement gap between students from lower and higher SES backgrounds.
Education also extends beyond the classroom. Given that developing countries do not have access to extensive educational opportunities, there is still a great need for technological education. Technology has the potential to greatly contribute to the prosperity of developing areas. By bridging the digital divide, it is possible for poverty-stricken regions to enhance communication with other countries, therefore offering economic, social, and political opportunities. With this however, there are several key misconceptions regarding the digital revolution. As noted by the Digital Divide Organization, introducing and implementing technology in poverty-stricken areas requires more than merely providing the resources. Poor areas need more than the equipment; they need to know how to use the technology in a resourceful way so that they can improve their circumstances, whether it is related to health care, economic support, or other areas of distress. While the digital divide is narrowing in developing countries due to the increase in portable telephones and Internet access, there is still a great deal of progress to be made. According to Reuters, mobile phones in developing countries have greatly contributed to the economic success as small businesses expand their scope of communication and increase the number of transactions made. Additionally, the number of Internet users are increasing in these areas, which shows that resources continue to infiltrate poor regions of the world. Although these facts exemplify significant advancements, the problem of literacy remains as one of the primary setbacks for poverty stricken areas. The misconception here lies in the fact that most people see the availability of technology as the primary factor in reducing the digital divide. As Ranjit Devraj states, “Even literate South Asians cannot benefit from the IT revolution without a working knowledge of the English language because of poor 'localistaion' -- a highly technical process by which computer programmes are translated into another language.” Therefore, in order for the digital divide to truly decrease, more efforts in educating users on how to properly use the technology given to them will prove to be the most useful in helping developing countries.
Global digital divide
One school of thought holds that, as the internet becomes progressively more sophisticated, the digital divide is growing, that those to whom it is least available are being left behind. Countries with a wide availability of Internet access can advance the economics of that country on a local and global scale. In Western society commerce, and social interaction generally, is almost entirely Internet dependant to a lesser or greater extent. Andy Grove, the former Chair of Intel, said that [...]by the mid-2000s all companies will be Internet companies, or they won’t be companies at all.
In countries where the Internet and other technologies are less/not accessible, uneducated people and societies that are not benefiting from the information age cannot be competitive in the global economy.
Canada: According to an Autumn 2007 Canadian Internet Use Survey, 73% of Canadians aged 16 and older went online in the 12 months prior to the survey, compared to 68% in 2005. In small towns and rural areas, only 65% of residences accessed the Internet, compared to 76% in urban areas. The digital divide still exists between the rich and the poor; 91% of people making more than $91,000/year regularly used the Internet, compared to 47% of people making less than $24,000. This gap has lowered slightly since 2005.
China: China is the largest developing country in the world and therefore saw their Internet population grow by 20% in 2006. However, just over 19% of Chinese people have access to the Internet and the digital divide is growing due to factors such as insufficient infrastructure and high online charges, (see Digital divide in China).
Europe: A European Union study from 2005 conducted in 14 European countries and focused on the issue of digital divide found that within the EU, the digital divide is primarily a matter of age and education. Among the young or educated the proportion of computer or Internet users is much higher than with the older or uneducated. Digital divide is also higher in rural areas. The study found that the presence of children in a household increases the chance of having a computer and Internet access, and that small businesses are catching up with larger enterprises when it comes to Internet access. The study also notes that despite increasing levels of ICT usage in all sections of society, the divide is not being bridged.
United States: According to a July 2008 Pew Internet & American Life report, “55% of adult Americans have broadband Internet connections at home, up from 47% who had high-speed access at home last year at this time [2007]”. This increase of 8% compared to the previous year’s increase of 5% suggests that the digital divide is decreasing, though the findings also show that low-income Americans’ broadband connections decreased by 3%.
Africa: Although Africa is far behind the rest of the world in terms of its provision of broadband Internet, new technologies are finally reaching Africa and slowly closing the digital divide. New undersea cables are being installed, which will not only promote better broadband Internet access between African countries and other continents, but will also make prices more affordable. The mobile phone industry is rapidly expanding in Africa as well, growing at twice the global rate. Technological knowledge is also increasing. DotSavvy, a digital organization that launches growth-promoting websites for businesses in Kenya, has even made a CD-ROM training course for HIV/AIDS health care providers. Africa is still not technologically caught up with its global neighbors, but it is improving and gradually closing the digital divide.
e-democracy and governance
The theoretical concepts of e-democracy and e-governance are still in early development, but many scholars agree that blogs (web logs), wikis and mailing lists may have significant effects in broadening the way democracy operates.
There is no consensus yet about the possible outcomes of this revolution; It has so far shown promise in improving electoral administration and reducing fraud and disenfranchisement. Particularly positive has been the reception of e-government services related to online delivery of government services, with portals, (such as United States USA.gov, in English, GobiernoUSA.gov in Spanish), used as intermediaries between the government and the citizen, replacing the need for people to queue in traditional offices.
One of the main problems associated with the digital divide as applied to a liberal democracy is the ability to participate in the new public space, cyberspace - as in the extreme case, exclusively computer-based democratic participation (deliberation forums, online voting, etc), could mean that no access meant no vote; there is a risk that some social groups — those without adequate access to or knowledge of IT — will be under-represented (or others over-represented) in the policy formation processes and this would be incompatible with the equality principles of democracy.
Proponents of the open content, free software, and open access social movements believe that these movements help equalize access to digital tools and information.
Commercial impacts
There has been cases of digital divide in commercial sectors. For instance, Japanese publishing companies resist against the introduction of e-books.
Some companies have been making an effort to close the digital divide while at the same time providing citizens with new job opportunities as well as making a profit for their business. The article by Dasgupta et al. describes that places like urban India, Bangladesh, and Senegal have set up “village phone” or “urban kiosk” programs in which citizens are essentially operators in their rural areas for the larger telephone services. This provides these people, frequently handicapped citizens, with a source of income, and the telephone services make a profit. But the telephone operators are not the only people benefiting from these new telephone services. A 1993 study found that after one year of having telephone technology available in Karnataka, India, local businesses expanded substantially. These examples show that technology companies have been able to work toward making the digital divide smaller, expand small businesses in rural areas, and run a profitable business.
Minghetti et al. shows how the digital divide directly affects the travel industry. Today most tourists use the internet to research vacation destinations. It is an extremely valuable tool because people can get huge amounts of specific information about their destination, but when people do not have access to this tool, information about choices of accommodations, flights, hotels and locations becomes much more limited and more difficult to find. Large and small tourism companies have found that the internet is helpful in increasing their visibility and competitiveness in today’s tourism market. Unfortunately, as more tourists are relying solely on technologies like the internet to book trips, businesses that do not have internet access are finding it more difficult to compete. Businesses in low-digital-access areas face even more challenges than those that are in more developed regions. These regions rely heavily on intermediaries like travel agents and tour operators to bring in tourists. If they were able to have access to the internet that intermediary relationship would be rendered largely unnecessary and those businesses would be able to communicate directly with their potential customers.
Overcoming the digital divide
Children encountering a One Laptop per Child computer
Overcoming the digital divide depends on the chosen definition of the divide. The first step consists in providing access. Income is the decisive variable in this challenge. In Mexico, for example, providing the economic possibility of ICT access to the poorest 20% of the society would require to reduce current access prices of estimated US$ 244 per year (in 2007) down to US$ 35 per year (US$ 3 per month, or a price reduction down to 13% of current prices). In Brazil, the poorest 20% of the population counts with merely US$ 9 per year to spend on ICT (US$ 0.75 per month) . This is the economic reality of these income segments in developing countries and shows the magnitude of the challenge to provide one laptop per child. It is known that in Latin America the borderline between ICT as a necessity good and ICT as a luxury good is roughly around the “magical number” of US$ 10 per person per month, or US$ 120 per year. This is how much ICT people seem to strive for and therefore how much ICT everybody would like to have as a minimum. Notwithstanding, this desire is not in agreement with what people actually have, since more than 40 % of the world population lives with less than US$ 2 per day, and around 20% on less than US$ 1 per day, or less than US$ 365 per year and therefore under the absolute poverty line. It cannot be expected that these people spend one third of their income to ICT (120/365 = 1/3). Alternatively, a (direct or indirect) subsidy could be given to balance the purchasing power of these segments. In the case of Uruguay, this subsidy would need to be as high as 6.2% of GDP, which is equivalent to Uruguay’s public spending on education plus health. This shows that the governments of the developing countries (and their economies) currently do not simply possess the means to provide personalized access to all, even if they opted for the cheapest equipment that is currently available.
Projects like One Laptop per Child and 50x15 are nevertheless a positive steps in reducing the divide, since they started a competition for the provision of cheaper access equipment. They tend to rely heavily upon open standards and free open source software. The OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world, to provide them with access to knowledge. Programmer and free software advocate Richard Stallman has highlighted the importance of free software among groups concerned with the digital divide such as the World Summit on the Information Society. Notwithstanding these efforts to provide individual access, shared access, such as through telecentre, desktop virtualization and multiseat configurations are probably the most simple and common way to affordable ICT access as of today.
Organizations such as Geekcorps, EduVision and Inveneo also help to lessen the divide, often doing so through the use of education systems that draw on information technology. The technology they employ often includes low-cost laptops/subnotebooks, handhelds (eg Simputer, E-slate, ...), tablet PCs, Mini-ITX PCs and low-cost WiFi-extending technology as cantennas and WokFis. Other information technology material usable in the classroom can also be made diy to lower expenses, including projectors.
In Digital Nation, Anthony G. Wilhelm calls on politicians to develop a national ICT agenda.
Mehra and others say researchers in the field should try to better understand the lifestyle of the minority or marginalized community,what is meaningful to them, and how they use (or do not use) different forms of the Internet for meeting their objectives, further stating, there is a need for a re-examination of questions based on traditional ways of looking at people, their social dynamics, and their interactions with technology.
Researchers, however,still tend to set a ‘method’ for studying the impact of Internet use. Assuming a golden rule for application that will function in all situations will not work. One strategy is to transfer goal-setting, decision making, and choice-determining processes into the hands of the disadvantaged users in order that they ‘fit’ Internet into their daily lives in ways that they themselves consider to be meaningful.
International cooperation between governments is increasing, aimed at reducing the divide, such as a recent agreement between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Egyptian government. It's a sign of progress that such attempts at bridging the digital divide are seriously being made.
Other participants in similar endeavors include the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development and the Digital Alliance Foundation.
A technology named Moonitin has devised a means to deliver access to the Internet without an Internet connection, without the need for any literacy, and completely for free via the dialing of Hypermostlinks from all of the over 5 billion telephones in the world. The adoption of this technology may become the beginning of the end of the worldwide digital divide.
The United Nations is aiming to raise awareness of the divide by way of the World Information Society Day which takes place yearly on May 17. It also set up the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Task Force in November 2001.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the IMARA organization (from Swahili word for "power") sponsors a variety of outreach programs which bridge the divide. Its aim is to find and implement long-term, sustainable solutions which will increase the availability of educational technology and resources to domestic and international communities. These projects are run under the aegis of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and staffed by MIT volunteers who give training, installed and donated computer setups in greater Boston, Massachusetts, Kenya, Indian reservations the American Southwest such as the Navajo Nation, the Middle East, and Fiji Islands. The CommuniTech project strives to empower underserved communities through sustainable technology and education.
Some cities in the world have started programs to bridge the divide for their residents, school children, students, parents and the elderly. One such program, founded in 1996, was sponsored by the city of Boston and called the Boston Digital Bridge Foundation. It especially concentrates on school children and their parents, helping to make both equally and similarly knowledgeable about computers, using application programs, and navigating the Internet. In 2010, the City of Boston received a major grant from the government to provide internet access and training to underserved populations including parents, children, youth, and the elderly.
Political measures within the United States have been made in the attempt to lessen the digital divide. In 2009, Congresswoman Doris Matsui introduced the Broadband Affordability Act, which calls for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to install a program that allows low-income citizens to get access to more affordable broadband Internet service. More accessibility to broadband service would help close the digital divide between high-income and low-income households. The Broadband Affordability Act models the FCC's Lifeline Assistance program, which offers basic telephone service to low-income households. The legislation was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on September 24, 2009, and is awaiting further action.
In the United States, minority ethnic groups have higher adoption rates for mobile communications devices than white Americans, to some degree leapfrogging over more expensive fixed-line Internet and PCs.
One of the main challenge in overcoming the digital divide is to widen the influence of the respective policies from those carried out by telecommunications authority, to the entire public sector. While national Internet agendas are led by national telecom authorities, such as the FCC and NTIA, the case of Chile shows that the funds managed by the telecom authority represent less than 5 % of the total funds spend by the overall government on ICT-related policies and projects, such as carried out the national health department, the education ministry or the finance department . Technology authorities continue to play an important part in this challenge, but, as the statistics from Chile suggest, their role is in reality already much smaller than what is generally assumed. The funds available to fight the digital divide throughout the public sector are a large multiple of those spent by technology and infrastructure authorities alone. Countries do not know which agency manages which kinds of ICT-funds, and do not even make an effort to track these resources. Not even the most developed countries collect this kind of information, but merely focus on the ad-hoc funds spent by the telecom authority. When the digital divide is defined in terms that go beyond mere access, the logical conclusion is to set up a coherent inter-agency policy strategy, which includes health, education and defense authorities. The first task has to be to take inventory of the funds available to the entire public sector. This is generally not done and we do not have a real picture about what is actually done to close the digital divide.
Awards
Each year, Certiport (which focuses on teaching digital literacy) awards the Champions of Digital Literacy award to leaders, world wide, who have helped to close the digital divide in their native countries
Other awards are given to those making an effort to bridge the digital divide. The World Summit Award (WSA) is associated with the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). WSA focuses on cultural diversity and its progression into a digitalized and accessible global form. 40 projects receive the WSA each year for their work in one of eight categories: e-Learning, e-Culture, e-Science, e-Government, e-Health, e-Business, e-Entertainment, and e-Inclusion. WSA inspired the formation of a nationally focused award. Delhi's Digital Empowerment Foundation and WSA partnered with Planet Finance India to establish the Manthan Award, which recognizes India's best e-Content practices. The Manthan Award is meant to motivate India to generate more e-Content by recognizing the practices that are working to create and share information throughout India's developing society.
Criticism
The existence of a digital divide is not universally recognized. Compaine (2001) argues it is a perceived gap. Technology gaps are relatively transient; hence the digital divide should soon disappear in any case. The knowledge of computers will become less important as they get smarter and easier to use. In the future people will not need high-tech skills to access the Internet and participate in e-commerce or e-democracy. Thus Compaine argues that a digital divide is not the issue to expend substantial amounts of funds or political capital. Graham (2011) has similarly argued that "attaining any semblance of virtual co-presence in order to achieve economic, social, and political goals involves the circumvention of not only the material divides (i.e. the fact that there is a lack of co-presence between people and information), but also the myriad divides that obstruct communication within the networks of the Internet."
Compaine suggests that that the government should let new technologies develop on their own so that their prices will be set naturally. It can be detrimental for the government to step in and set prices on new technologies too soon because it is almost impossible to tell how long one will stay on the market. Instead of making sure that everyone can afford a new technology, the government should wait to see if it will be replaced by something better and more cost effective. Compaine cites the telephone and color television as examples of this point. If the government had prematurely stepped in and made telegraphs and the first color television model readily available to the general public, the later and more successful models may have had more trouble being implemented. Compaine’s findings suggest that it takes time before new technologies are determined “necessary,” and the government should not be too eager to give people access to technologies and step in before they are needed.
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