Seminar Four New Technologies, New Digital Divides Objective: to understand the importance of new technologies in processes of globalization. To appreciate the nature of various ‘digital divides’ in cyberspace.

1. SLSP2016 (Director: Austin Harrington,
Session lecturer: Rodanthi Tzanelli)
Lecture 4: New Technologies, New
Digital Divides

2. Summary
• Original definition of ‘digital divide’
• Digital and urban spatial divide
• IT technologies as media
• Why is digital divide important? What are its
implications for a globalised world?
• Problems and solutions with original definition
• Literacy and computing for a better future

3. What is the digital divide?
• It refers to some sort of segregation defined on
the basis of digital tools and features – but can
we define the tools, circumstances, conditions
that sustain this divide? Where and how does
this happen, in other words?
• Original definition: a divide of social nature
based on lack of access to IT hardware and
software

4. Physical divide corresponds with digital divide but
which is partially only a social divide

5. Example: Thessaloniki, Greece
Behind main square local business
based on histories of city
No public face by municipality but also no
entitlement to access or courses for them

6. Bogus definition? :-P
Compare it with old urban social
divides
Disregards virtuality’s role in defining
‘space’ beyond physical geographies
But does this erase social inequalities
in practice???

7. A step back: digital (IT) technologies as media form
• Media is a concept inclusive of communicative
intermediary products that come in various forms:
1. print (such as books, newspapers and
magazines)
2. visual (such as paintings, photographs)
3. audiovisual and digital (film, the Internet)
• If the media act as vehicles of socio-cultural
messages, mediations refer to the ways these
messages are communicated and the very act of
their communication (such as transmission).
• They are institutions operating nationally but
increasingly more transnationally
• As institutions they entertain universal recognition
like the family or the state, partaking in
socialisation processes
• Media literacy entwined with production of
national and cosmopolitan citizenship
(globalization as a developmental discourse: who
has access to media spheres?)

8. So in addressing a digital divide we need
to take on board:
1. There are poor and
socially disadvantaged
populations with no
access to IT resources
2. There are unemployed
groups with not IT skills
on their CV
3. There are disabled people
with no physical access to
social services
4. Etc, etc. etc……
Access to computers and stuff solves the
problem!!!!

9. Problems in future heaven ()
• Addressing such issues conforms
to utopian shifts to equal global
and national societies
• Ou (u=non)+topos (=place)
facilitated by placelessness of the
Internet for example
• All people, irrespective of colour,
race, class, physical capability can
be ‘world citizens’ in a virtually
connected world…
• But does focusing on software
and hardware pay attention to the
ways human and social systems
inform technology?

10. A step forward: how did (trans)national
institutions respond to digital divides?
• ‘Hole in the Wall’, a New Delhi government project:
outdoor five-station computer kiosk for one of the
poorest slums consisting by computer booths and
monitors protruded through walls for street children.
No teachers/instructors in line with unfettered
educational development principles
• Outcome: disrupted Internet access; no special
educational provision in Hindi meant few could
understand content; no community organisation
involvement meant no supervision
• Consequences: kids skipped school, learned to use
joystick and keyboard and some to surf the web – but
to no clear ends….

11. A real hole in the wall… 

12. Developed & developing world:
Centralised or networked initiatives
• Centralised efforts at regional
or national self-presentation
valuable, esp. where
geographical, political and
economic barriers
• Existing cultural centres
extend their presence
virtually too, maximising
impact and audiences
(Louvre, Tate, etc)
• Administrative presence
online ensuring accessibility
for all citizens (e.g. council
sites, health services etc)

13. More holes? 
• Such websites require double literacy skills:
background knowledge of Louvre’s global function
as heritage repository
• Social service websites may procure information
but extra education on navigating them is necessary
• Disability-friendly access uneven across world (e.g.
alternative formats for blind or hard of hearing
users?)
• UK provision of relevant classes to working class
users not matched in other countries: ‘digital divide’
geographically uneven (geopolitical divide)

14. Reconsidering digital divide
• Wrong to imply digital divide=binarism of ‘haves’
(affluent) and ‘have nots’ (poor)
• We must factor in issues beyond physical access and
connectivity – what about access to additional
technologies enabling good use of computers (‘learning
how to…’)
• Original definition can be patronising, predicating old
conceptions of civilisation on basis of IT capital
• Example: US African-Americans often portrayed as
‘digitally poor’, not accounting for differences in access
within such minority groups (divide bridged when White-
Black income small or non-existent)

15. Reconsidering digital divide
• Notion of digital divide implying fixed causality
chains – i.e. lack of access to computers and the
Internet damages life prospects
• Point true to some extent but ignoring how
technology and society are compexly
intertwined – we need turn attention to the
ways social institutions such as the state,
schooling or enable uses of technology and
how

16. No ‘digital divide’, only ‘social exclusion’
• An older debate rooted in development of social
hierarchies on which technology is then hooked
(there is no evil technology, only
discriminatory practices and people)
• Goal of using ICT with various marginalised
groups is to further social inclusion by focusing
‘on the transformation, not the technology’
(Jarboe 2001: 31)

17. Technology for social inclusion
• Concept originating in European policy discourse,
referring to participation of families and
communities in society and the maintenance of
control over their destiny by access to economic
resources, health, employment, housing education
• LET’S START TALKING ABOUT MODES OF
CIVIC PARTICIPATION INSTEAD…..
• Access as ownership or availability of computers
ignores full cost (personal maintenance, software
updates, Internet connection, institutional training
and administration)

18. Technology for social inclusion
• Access as conduit: everybody can connect to a
communal supply line providing electricity, cable and
Internet on a regular basis ignores different supply
models in and within different countries.
• Mumbai slums and struggles to equal access tells us a
different story: Dharavi households buy electricity from
neighbours or local ‘lords’ with roots in community; few
have Internet access. The only supplier of
Internet/computer education is private (Reality Tours)
• Access and literacy: people’s ability to make
meaningful social use of computers and the Internet

19. Literacy
• Common: individual skill or ability to write and
read placed nevertheless in specific socio-cultural
contexts
• Particular (national, regional/idiomatic)
language/writing skills make sense in terms of
mediation only if others understand you and
institutions/organisations use them
• Advanced: the mastery over processes by means of
which culturally significant information is coded

20. Literacy and ICT
• Both present advances in human communication
and knowledge production
• Literacy prerequisite in participation at early stage
industrialisation and capitalism, ICT prerequisite for
participation in new capitalist-informational age
• Both necessitate connection to physical artefact
(book or computer), sources of information via this
artefact and meaningful use of this information
• Both prompt production of new knowledge and
information based on human-artefact connections

21. Acquisition of ICT literacy
• Aforementioned connections between humans
and artefacts show that ICT literacy is not just a
cognitive skill but a question of power, politics
and governance (global and national)
• It intersects with opportunities to attend
relevant classes, inequitable distribution of
resources across nation-states and curricula that
meet needs and ends of only particular social
groups….

22. Good access
• Physical resources: access
to computers and
communication systems
• Digital resources: materials
made available online
• Human resources: literacy
concerning uses of computer
use and online
communication
• Social resources:
community, institutional and
societal structures that
support ICT access