Digital Divide

Introduction Internet was hailed as the unifying media which would bridge the gap between the two very distinct groups of the haves and the have-nots, not only in terms of economics opportunities, but also political participation and betterment of life in general. It was supposed to be the platform where every ones virtual identity was equal to that of the next. It is an exponentially growing network of computer networks which has evolved its own culture, endless media hype and growing literature. But, in the words provided by the International Telecommunication Union press release, 1995, The internet suffers from the problems often found in resources that are in common ownership: potential misuse, security problems and a lack of structure. Even Newt Gingrich exhibits caution in his optimism when he says, This new era will see a revolution in goods and services that will empower and enhance most people. The term to be of note here is most, in place of a more absolute all.

What it was supposed to be The prevalent image reigning on the imaginations of most is that of energetic and inventive young men, in backyards and garden sheds, who are the driving force which kick-started the industry taking the world into the information age. As the Economist puts it, the growth of the internet is not a fluke or fad, but the consequence of unleashing the power of individual creativity. If it were an economy it would be the triumph of the free market over central planning. Democracy over dictatorship. Rheingold hoped for what was first an impossibility with other communication mediums, It is still possible for people round the world to make sure this new sphere of vital human discourse remains open to the citizens of the planet before the political and economic big boys seize it, censor it, meter it, and sell it back to us. Now this idea is again laughable. We will see how commercialization has this new medium of democracy firmly in its grip.

Emergence of the internet and the beginning of its commercialization

Roots of the internet were laid in Pentagons Advanced Research Projects Agency. Its purpose was the linking of military computer researchers using the technique of splitting the data and transmitting it in packets. This lead to security as even if intercepted, only one small packet has been leaked, and also safety as in case of crisis if a node had been affected or destructed, the entire network is still intact with no loss of information. This being the mid1960s, a parallel work being done was by the National Physical Laboratory, UK, which was the ARPANET. The growth of the network was as fast as 4 nodes in 1969 to over a 100 in 1975. This was when it was turned over to the Defence Communications Agency. In the 1980s, academic networks bloomed like the CSNET of the National Science Foundation. This later became the NSFNET which replaced ARPANET in 1990. Privatization of regional NSF networks marked the emergence of commercial basis for the interconnected networks, which remained a basis for all subsequent expansion.

Growth of the internet and .edu to .com Soon, a fully commercial backbone replaced the one developed by the government. Internet service providers turned into large public companies are they merged. The presiding motivation is explained by the words of Russ James who said that the internet is a richer environment for exploring commercial capabilities. It would not be a financially prudent decision by corporations to leave as powerful and far-reaching a medium as this untouched and unexplored. WWW was developed at the European Centre for Particle Research in 1989, but it took as long as 1993 to take off. Its launch was aided by the software developed at the University of Illinois, which was the creation of browsers and graphical interfaces. This made content searches for key words possible for the Net. Commercial developers of browsers like Netscape are said to have become rich overnight. 1995 saw over 50,000 website which more than doubled every 2 to 3 months. The most significant change in the character of WWW was the obvious rise of commercial sites. The proportion of websites devoted to commercial use grew from 4.6% in 1993 to 50% in 1996. Tracking the nature of internet use is made possible by looking at the domain name under which its use it categorized. By 1994, .com had replaced .edu as the most common domain name. By 1996, there were 9.4 million host computers connected to the network.

The 2 features of major corporations in the telecommunications and information sectors that stood out in the 1990s were the rash of mergers and incorporation that took place; an on-going diversification of activity.

Both were designed to place the mega-corporations in pole positions as the internets commercialization became serious. In 1995, mergers and acquisition transactions in the IT industry jumped by 57%, which was of the transaction value of $134 million. The corporate takeover and commercialization of the internet can lead easily to a weary fatalism, accepting that another potentially liberating technology has been engulfed by the still rampant forms of the free market.

Social vs commercial Even the most casual serfer come across examples of the seriously progressive potential of its social evolutions. Its success is illustrated by the example, when Greenpeace found themselves in dispute with Shell over the disposal of redundant North Sea oil rigs, environmental activists used the Web to gather up support. Evidence from surveys (conducted in 1994) suggests that demand for information of the Web is high, and indeed exceeds the demand for entertainment. The question then arises of why is corporate strategy the opposite. The answer can be taken from a quote by Howard Besser, The industry believes that in the long terms this other set of services will prove more lucrative. This, in turn, leads to another concern of what will make the Net grow, supply or demand. The ideal reality visualized initially was that of a wired universe, where virtual communities would offer mutual support and conviviality in a global digital commune. There will, apparently, exist a horizontal communications structure, unlike the hierarchical vertical structures of old.

The economic divide The internet, in the 1990s had a toys for boys tag associated with it where the women were excluded because of the sexist nature of chat lines and the intrinsic patriarchality of its growth. But, maybe a more fundamental issue would be the emergence of division and exclusion by price. Consolidation of a market structure is replicating patterns of exclusion and differentiation apparent in earlier technologies. The basic requirements to allow access are a computer with the facility to link to the network, a phone line and a modem. Poor families do not even have access to telephones. The start-up hardware would cost a lot more than they are likely to afford. For example, home-computer ownership in the US reached a ceiling in 1995. There was hardly any growth as the majority of sales were being made to existing owners who were upgrading their existing computer, rather than diffusion into new groups. A journal of the Association of Chief Police Officers, 1996, expressed their fear for the arrival of an

electronic underclass, alienated, denied access to the new society because of a lack of education and wealth. Also, the emergence of new communications goods coincided with an ever widening profile of income inequality. From the year 1979 to 1993, the poorest 10% of the UK population saw a real income drop by around 18%, whereas the richest 10% saw a boost of up to 61%. The touted global village was a global bazaar instead. As communications are driven into the market place, the widening inequalities of economic fortune are translated into cultural and political disadvantage. The entire debate between diversity and conglomeration has a clear answer. The diversity expected to arise out of the power to the individual given by new technology has been quashed against the stronger forces of huge conglomerates. Even though Apple and such super-powers (in their own rights) have struggled, stumbled and barely dragged through many a time and individually powered sites have blossomed in huge numbers, the point remains that all these diverse sites put together can still not compare to the giants, and also, these giants can take the heavy losses due to their sheer size.

The divide and politics The arrival of cable television was expected to bring in a new golden age of teledemocracy where voters would have direct access to their political masters and political information for citizenship would be available far and wide, and on demand. As we know, this did not see the light of day and all these hopes remained unfounded. A similar aspiration is that of cyber democracy. Clifford Stoll had a dim view to share when he said that until the golden age arrives, only the techno-literati will be enfranchised with network access. A limited online community can only go as far as giving privileged access to the political universe which will remain unavailable to the techno poor. Another important point to be kept in mind is that the character of politics envisaged changes the nature of democracy. Should it function the way it is wished to, it removes a valid reason for representative government. There is potential for a fundamental individualization of politics. Since everyone can merely access the internet and exercise democracy freely and equally without the need of any aid by voicing his/her opinion on everything with the possibility of wide reach, the role of representative and intermediary organizations is atrophied. The presupposition of universal access, itself illusory, is also based on a fiction about the nature of interactivity. Individualization, unequal access and disenfranchisement may be the outcome of internet politics.

The international divide

Access to an abundant resource is only of value to commercial exploitation if that access can be curtailed by the price mechanism. The aids and help that developing countries were now coming to rely on and anticipate was suddenly rerouted back to the developed world in their hour of need. This led to a hostile situation for these developing countries. The combination of growing Northern protectionism, declining aid, higher real interest rates and growing debt further consolidated the endemic crisis of third world economies. The formation of the NonAligned Movement put pressure for the demand of a New International Economic Order. The UNESCO got involved and the demand for a New World Information and Communication Order led to the formation of the MacBride Commission and eventually the International Programme for the Development of Communications. To illustrate, book production continues to be dominated by Europe and the USA. The dominance of the English-language multinational publishers stands as proof. More than half of the worlds newspaper production remains in industrialized West. Africa has 1% of the worlds newspaper circulation. The Internet Society estimated that in 1994 there were 0.002 internet users per 1000 inhabitant in India, compared to 48.9 in Sweden. Most African nations still have no internet access.