[Sigiii-l] Plaza Fwd: [gcnp] WSIS? We Seize

[Michel J. Menou]

With the kind permission of Steve Cisler I am forwarding his message
below which is quite relevant for the Plaza debate. Sorry for the
length. 
Michel


This is a forwarded message
From: Steve Cisler <cisler at pobox.com>
To: gcnp at globalcn.tc.ca
Date: Tuesday, September 23, 2003, 5:03:47 PM
Subject: [gcnp] WSIS? We Seize

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WSIS? We Seize is an alternative view of WSIS (World Summit on the 
Information Society),  assembled as a newspaper. 5000 copies have been 
printed and are being distributed at places in Europe like Next Five 
Minutes and the Euro. Social Forum.  I brought about 50 copies from 
Amsterdam last week. You can download the 10 Mb pdf file from 
www.makeworlds.org or use http://access.adobe.com/simple_form.html to 
convert it to html.

Here's the piece I wrote for it.

Digital Divide: the metastasis of a buzzword

Steve Cisler,
cisler at pobox.com
August 25, 2003

The problems of the world are frequently expressed in catch phrases 
that serve as sort of a lazy shorthand for a complex and flawed  world 
view.  "Iron Curtain," "Jewish Question," "Washington Consensus,"  and 
"Third World"  are but a few that have had a big impact over the years. 
Within the realm of telecommunications, the phrase "digital divide"
has caught on.

The phrase "digital divide"  was coined in the mid-1990’s  to describe 
the split in a family where the husband was online and using computers 
a great deal, and the wife was not.  The Clinton administration used it 
to describe the gap between those groups, societies, and later 
countries that had access and those that did not.  Variations on the 
theme included “cyber-segregation” and “racial ravine” which emphasized 
the racial divisions in access to new technologies. The term spread in 
the late 1990’s and soon found its way into United Nations documents,  
technology company donation programs, foundation goals, and 
legislation.  During the  Bush administration, the use in the United 
States declined but the Tsunami wave carrying the term continues to 
this day. Search on Google for “digital divide” and almost any country 
and there will be many hits. Some people are critical of the term but 
continue to use it.  One author disliked it but his publisher insisted 
on using it in the book title. Grass roots activists know it is 
simplistic and yet they know it can be useful in fund raising. In a 
time when the attention span of decision-makers (and people who sign 
checks) is short, the temptation is great to use the term. What are the 
problems with the term?

Binary world view
First, it posits a binary split in the world, based on connectivity.  
Early Internet maps showed  connectivity by country.  If you your 
country had a direct connection to the Internet, it was colored purple. 
This number grew through the 90’s  (Bhutan, one of the very last,  
hooked up in 1999) Many times these initial connections benefitted only 
a physics department at a university in the capital city or a 
government ministry.  For this reason, the connectivity maps were 
misleading.  Expressing the differences in connectivity, access to 
computers, training, and salient content as a “divide” that requires 
“bridging” is also a crude representation of  a situation.  The 
statistics we usually quote are from NUA in Ireland.  As of September 
2002, they estimated that more than 600 million people were online, 
most of whom were in Canada, United States, and Europe.  As I write 
this article, the World POPClock estimates the current population at 
6,313,900,075. So about 90% of the world is not online.

Excessive rhetoric
Expressing this as a divide or a problem benefits those whose goal is 
spread networks. This includes many in the international development 
industry (where I’d place myself), technology companies, the 
International Telecommunications Union, numerous charities, 
foundations, and NGOs, some political activists, and hobbyists involved 
in techno-communitarian projects. One  problem is exaggerating the 
consequences of being offline.  The rhetoric is reminiscent of 
missionaries raising money for their overseas missions to convert the 
heathen and save them from Hell.  In the same way, countries, 
businesses, small towns, youth, indigenous groups are all doomed if 
they don’t get connected.  Here is  language from a USAID project in 
primary schools in Uganda. It dates from 2000: “A concerted effort must 
be made to get technology into the core of the Ugandan educational 
system, so that Uganda is not left behind in the coming technology 
revolution.  It is also important for USAID to join this effort, 
focusing on bringing access to new information technology, so that 
development efforts across the board are not undermined by a future 
society of people, who will not have the computer literacy skills to 
participate in the new electronic global economy. “ The problems of a 
country, a people, a town, or an individual are stated as one of  lack 
of access to networked computers.  The technology drives so many of the 
projects that other issues are obscured, and trying to raise support 
for projects without a technology component iis difficult when digital 
divide projects receive the most publicity.

Corporate agenda
Technology companies and associated consultants made a killing during 
the Year 2000 (Y2K) furor. Billions in services (upgrades, code 
patches, new networks) were sold prior to the end of 1999. When almost 
nothing bad took place at the start of the new year,  there were two 
reactions.  An IBM executive told me that just showed all the prep work 
was done and that the IT departments were ready. He considered it a 
success.  However, a technologist in Venezuela said they had done 
nothing because they always lived from crisis to crisis and they saw 
this as just another attempt to market services.  When nothing 
happened, they felt vindicated. So, too, the efforts by high technology 
companies to “bridge the digital divide’ are seen as another case of 
creating new markets and generating enough FUD (fear, uncertainty, and 
doubt) that the United Nations, whole countries, and associated 
development agencies will buy into the “problem” in the same way they 
did before Y2K.   HP (and other firms including the satellite firm I 
worked for) say they “want to do well by doing good.”  This means that 
they want to expand markets to demographic groups and economic classes 
that have not participated in the so-called digital revolution. They 
want to help out and also contribute to the bottom line, but when the 
new economy goes bust and a telecommunications crash follows, the 
“doing good” part usually remains only on web sites and in archives of 
CEO speeches.

Priorities in development
These programs that promote ICT (development speak for “information and 
communication technology/ies") multiplied in the mid-1990’s. 
Evaluations were generous about the results and the impact on those who 
came into contact with the training, the telecenter, or the computer 
labs. The projects multiplied because they fit the agenda of the donors 
and loan officers, and the recipients could not press for less sexy, 
more mundane projects such as pay for teachers, literacy instruction, 
or equipment that had little to do with computer networks. Many of the 
projects did not reflect the real needs and priorities of the local 
populations. The best project organizers were able to link ICT 
solutions to the expressed problems and needs of people who had no idea 
what the Internet was or how computers might be used. However, many 
“bridge the digital divide” projects did not consult the local people 
who were most affected.  The organizers were driven by the technology, 
and this is still a problem even though the evidence is voluminous that 
better integration is needed. Although projects can be designed to make 
good use of the technology, there exists another problem. How do you 
set priorities?

Bill Gates, after seeing the problems of a neighborhood in Soweto, 
South Africa said this to Bill Moyers*: “Well we took a computer and we 
took it to this community center in Soweto .  And generally there 
wasn’t power in that community center.  But they’d rigged up this thing 
where the cord went 200 yards to this place where there was a 
generator. You know powered by diesel.  So this computer got turned on. 
And when the press was there it was all working just fine. And it was
ludicrous, you know. It was clear to me that the priority issues for 
the people who lived there in that particular community were more 
related to health than they were to having that computer.   And so 
there’s certainly a role for getting computers out there.  But when you 
look at the, say, the 2 billion of the 6 billion the planet who are 
living on the least income.  You know they deserve a chance.  And that 
chance can only be given by improving the health conditions. “

Mr. Gates has enough money that his foundation can support programs for 
both health and computers, but  the school principal in Uganda may have 
to decide on paying for electricity, paper, and air conditioners for 
the donated computers instead of spending the money on something more 
basic like text books, more lecturers, or better food for the students. 
Usually this is expressed as, “You talk about the digital divide! What 
about the education divide, the health divide, the water divide”  And 
housing, electricity, roads, food, and a dozen other expressions of 
gaps. Most of the efforts are hyped as “transformative” and for a small 
number of people they can be, but they are not going to radically 
change the health of a neighborhood or a country.

I live in Silicon Valley where there is a very high number of
residents who are connected. Many more use public libraries, schools, 
and community technology centers to stay connected. But the region has 
twice the unemployment of the country as a whole, and as companies seek 
to cut costs the mid-level high tech jobs are leaving the area.  
Forrester Research predicts that 3.3 million more jobs will leave the 
U.S. by 2015.  High tech skills and connectivity do not assure the 
health of a region or security for individuals.

Complex reasons for not being connected
Another problem is that the definition of the divide is changed as more 
people are connected.  This is expressed in two ways: speed of 
connection and amount of access.  As most people gain access to dialup 
in a country, the problem is re-defined as access to cable, DSL, or 
high speed wireless access. If you are stuck with a modem, you are on 
the other side of the divide.  If you don’t own a computer, the 
emphasis is on how many are in households, rather than accessing the 
network in public places.   In countries where the Internet has been 
available for a decade or more, there is a leveling off of new users, 
and many  have dropped off for technical reasons or because of a bad 
experience online. In the United States the Pew Internet and America 
Life Project reports that 24% of Americans are not online and of those 
56% have no intention of going online. Socially and physically they 
live close to the Internet but they won’t use it.  These people are 
generally older, rural, white, and retired. The point is that there are 
many reasons for people to be grouped on one side of a so-called 
digital divide, but the term obscures the many reasons for their lack  
of access.

Why inequalities will continue
There are many structural and cultural reasons why large gaps will 
persist and increase.  Our economy in the developed world is stagnant, 
there is still an ascending curve of new technology developments, price 
decreases for components, steady deployment of network infrastructure, 
and continued systemic support for research, training, marketing of 
this technological system. It is slower than during the Internet bubble 
but still significant. The most visible manifestation is the investment 
in 802.11 wireless networks. In the developing world they pay higher 
prices for everything except labor: transport, support, components, 
electricity, connectivity, supplies (paper, media, ink, technical 
pubs). Legal commercial software costs as much as  someone in Holland 
or Canada pays. The interest rates on money are higher for small 
business loans. There are fewer choices of products, most of which are 
not produced locally, and the regulatory environment is not geared to 
encourage rapid deployment. Exceptions seem to be cell phone services 
in some countries and oases of innovation in some countries such as 
India and Brazil. While we have our own corruption (Enron, Worldcom), 
theirs seems to have a higher impact on economic development and the 
way development money is used. In sum, while the curve of growth and 
deployment for ICT is creeping upward in poor countries, the rate of 
everything in our countries is progressing much faster, thus making the 
differences more pronounced. The gap increases. Technology  products 
are developed in rich countries are  based on our consumer culture’s 
hierarchy of wants, whereas poor countries have more basic needs. The 
elites in country respond to “wants” because their “needs” are 
satisfied. They want a PDA with a camera just as much as a gizmo junkie 
is Silicon Valley does.  This affects planning and design for projects. 
  Projects such as the Simputer struggle to survive. Donor programs do 
not take into account the total cost of ownership for ICT projects. The 
true cost is hidden from the recipient and frequently the donors too. 
Preparation for continuing these projects does not start during the 
planning cycle but after the program has started. The complexity of 
technology projects is misunderestimated (to use  President Bush’s 
phrase). Few realize they are imposing a technological system (to use 
Thomas Hughes phrase) in places where only fragments are functioning 
efficiently.

What is to be done?
What makes me optimistic are the grass-roots workers and activists and 
other technical experts in many of these countries who ignore some of 
the very barriers I have described and are able to cultivate small 
oases of innovation and inclusiveness in problematic environments.  
They need support from each other and from outsiders, and of course the 
communication networks have helped make this easier. Because the 
problems and solutions are glocal—a mix of local and global, the need 
to convene and network both locally, regionally, and internationally 
puts a big burden on organizations with little money for travel or time 
spent away from their local efforts. We have to make better use of 
face-to-face time together and learn how it can be effectively 
augmented with common online tools such as chat, content management 
systems,web logs, mailing lists, databases, and wikis.  The fabled gap 
may not lessen, but the  threads will increase and loose network 
connections will grow stronger.




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