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February 25, 2005
World Bank Says Digital Divide Narrowing Rapidly; Pigs Seen Flying Over Geneva
So it seems there's a Reuters story circulating the wires about a new World Bank report suggesting that the digital divide is being bridged rapidly worldwide.
"The digital divide is rapidly closing," the report said. "People in the developing world are getting more access at an incredible rate -- far faster than they got access to new technologies in the past." It goes on to say that half the world's population now has access to a fixed-line telephone, and 77% to a mobile network -- surpassing a WSIS
campaign goal that calls for 50 percent access by 2015.
I haven't read the full report -- oddly, it's not on the World Bank website at the time I'm writing this -- but it seems to equate bridging the digital divide with the spread of telephony, which strikes me as very misguided. Unless all of those mobiles are offering Internet access, then they're not addressing the issue of ubiquitous Internet access, not to mention universal literacy and local language content needs, which in my mind are pre-requisites to bridging the digital divide.
Saying that the digital divide is being bridged rapidly makes no sense when many countries still have Internet penetration rates of less than one percent. And it does a huge disservice to policymaking and public understanding of the issue, because it suggests the job is done, let's not worry about it, and takes pressure off all these policymakers here in Geneva who are debating how to finance bridging the digital divide. I mean, if I were a policymaker or a donor under political pressure to pick my spending priorities carefully and the World Bank just told be the digital divide is becoming a non-issue, do you think I might put my resources elsewhere? It's already happened in the US thanks to overly rosy government reports on the digital divide, and the American digital divide isn't as severe as the international one, so the impact internationally could be devastating if policymakers start ignoring the issue... -andy
Posted by acarvin at February 25, 2005 3:23 AM
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