CIAO DATE: 11/2008
January 2002
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
The purpose of this paper or lecture is to determine whether there is any basis for creating a “synthesis” of the multiple dimensions of what is popularly known as the “Digital Divide in terms of a series of interlocking ramps, cloverleaves, bridges, and ladders. To borrow an analogy, a number of veins, fault lines, cracks, or dimensions, such as income, education, occupation, labour, age, gender, race and ethnicity, and nation, run through the Information Highway, fracturing it into unequal parts, called the ““Digital Haves”” and “Digital Have-Nots”. Can the beginnings of a synthesis be constructed by building lateral bridges, ramps, and cloverleaves between these dimensions, and vertical ladders between the ““Digital Haves”” and “Have-Nots?” Like ladders and bridges, some of the links will be linear, direct and simple; but like ramps and cloverleaves, other links will be curvilinear, indirect, and complex, requiring loops and feedbacks among the dimensions for a complete understanding of the Divide. Given the deep fissures in the local, regional, national, and global Information Highway, we will not attain a complete synthesis. Hopefully I will be able to erect some signposts pointing to the paths necessary for building a more unitary conceptualization of the social, economic, and political infrastructure of the Digital Divide.
Resource link: Globalized and Localized Digital Divides Along the Information Highway: A Fragile Synthesis Across Bridges, Ramps, Cloverleaves, and Ladders. [PDF] - 1.3M