Global Digital Divide
The world has been always divided by those who "haves" and those who "have nots" and it has been the center of many debates and discussion for long time. Even before the emergence of internet, the system of "telecommunication" itself was already an issue when countries outside of North America and Europe had severely low access to even basic devices like telephone. (Couldry 196) This shows that the inequalities in information resources among nations have been an issue for a long time. While the emergence of digital technology like computer and internet have certainly gave benefits to shorten these gaps by allow the "free-flowing" of information globally, this did not stop the "stark reality" called "Global Digital Divide" to arise. (Robison, and Crenshaw 34) Ironically, the digital technology "connected" the world in terms of spatial and timely manner, but "divided" the world at the same time by segregating the nations according to the range of internet diffusion; and the access to the information and knowledge. Other than the affluence of the nations, the researches have shown that there are important "social and political structures" that define the rates of digital development, which usually favors the "characteristic of the West". (Robison, and Crenshaw 34) The "West" here, refers to the major Western countries that have strong political power as well as affluence specifically the G8 countries including United States, France, Canada, Germany, Japan, Russia, Italy, and the United Kingdom. For example, according to the research conducted by ITU (International Telecommunication Union), "less than 3 out of every 100 Africans use the Internet, compared with an average of 1 out of every 2 inhabitants of the G8 countries" by 2004. ("What¡¯s the state of ICT access around the world?") The digital technology became essential tool for the world's economic affair mainly because it provided the ways to minimize the costs and the difficulty in distribution of goods in mass consumption society. (Robison, and Crenshaw 35) The governments first noticed the significance of digital divide exist within United States also because of economical reasons since their population who did not go online had an impact on the American economic growth. (Couldry 187) For the same reason, The United Nation claimed that the poor telecommunication access the developing nations have would block them to enter the global consumer market today. (Couldry 187) Although the mobile phone usage and the computer usage of developing nations showed significant growth over the 10 years, there are still considerable disparities in IT access. In fact, the only exception that reached almost similar to the access to the informational technology of North America is Western Europe. (Robison, and Crenshaw 38) These gaps are mostly due to the different phases of patterns of "technological diffusion" among nations. As shown in figure 2, the technological diffusion generally goes through five stages when it enters the market. It takes long time for a technology to build up to majority level from innovators or early adaptors levels, which explains the closing gaps between North America and other nations that exist now but also the reasons why North America or the Europe centuries are still more ahead in numbers since for them, the stages of diffusion started faster therefore progressed faster than other nations. (Robison, and Crenshaw 39) The reason why these time gaps exist mostly the result of GDP per capita and the costs of services; but there are also factors other than raw economics such as social concentration on certain region of the nations that create, provide, and receive the Internet (or other technologies) demand and supply. For example, even when the technology enters the developing nation, it usually starts at the major city where the business and the large universities are concentrated in and it takes extra time for them to reach nation-wide.
