THE DIGITAL DIVIDE REVISITED

There is a tendency to discuss the “digital divide” in terms of connectivity. Consequently, it is assumed by many that when telephone or Internet connections become very wide spread, the digital divide will disappear. Of course one may define the digital divide so that this is true. To do so would seem to miss a more important fact. The information revolution is likely to benefit poor nations less than it benefits rich nations.

Some technological developments offer the possibility of reducing the connectivity gap, as Braga, Sareen and I wrote recently, new developments in wireless seem likely to extend and expand the improvements in telecommunications connectivity begun with mobile phones, and low cost hardware will bring the Internet to many of those newly connected to the telephone network. Other developments such as grid computing, open source software could lead to more accessible computing services.

Posted Power Point presentation pictures portray these points.

Poor countries tend to spend less of their GDP on ICT than do rich countries. (see Slide 1, with data from the 2002 World Development Report).

Disaggregate those averages. One can consider different ICT expenditures for different people. Lots of people in a given society will share basic ICT access. In the poorest societies, that basic access may be just a transistor radio. More affluent societies may add a telephone, a cassette recorder or a TV to the radio. Rich societies may add still more devices to the basic package, such as both mobile and fixed line telephones, computers, Internet connectivity, DVDs, CD recorders, etc..

There are also high-end ICT that are used by relatively few people in their work. Thus computerized tomography and other medical instrumentation may be used to provide sophisticated diagnostic services in tertiary health care facilities. Supercomputers may be used by weather and climate forecasters to process masses of data from networks of automated gauges and from satellite remote sensing. High performance computing (HPC) may be required by those responsible for airframe design and computer simulation the designed high performance aircraft. The complexity of modern telephone networks is such that analysts must simulate the performance of millions of lines of software with large scale computers. The pharmaceutical industry uses HPC for genomics, especially for the identification of possible functions for new drugs and for development of new diagnostics and vaccines.

In general one will find this high-end technology only in richer countries. Slide 2 illustrates my guess that developing countries not only have lower investments per capita in basic ICT, but fall far behind developed countries in high-end ICT investments.

Slide 3 notes that the average ICT investment is obtained by integrating (summing) from low to high end ICT, but that the integral (sum) is likely to be dominated by two different kinds of elements – low-end ICT expenditures that are made by large numbers of people, and large, high-end expenditures even though they are infrequent.

The basis for the information revolution is the rapid decrease in price for many ICT technologies. Slide 4 is based on the assumption that the marginal value of ICT is equal to its marginal cost at a given point in time. If the technology improves, then the marginal value will improve for all cost levels.

It also seems likely that if telephones become cheaper, people in poor countries will buy more telephones, and indeed will spend more money on telephones. Developed countries may well have saturated markets for some basic ICT, but are likely to buy more high-end technology as that technology improves. Thus, in Slide 5, the distributions for expenditures for ICT are shifted to the right for both developed and developing nations after a period of time.

The point of the exercise is to show that while the gap in basic ICT may be closing, the gap in high-end ICT may be continuing. The improved connectivity to basic ICT in developing nations (both more connectivity, and moving up scale in basic services) certainly offers great promise for those seeking to utilize ICT to meet basic human needs. However, a continuing gap in high-end ICT would suggest an important continuing (and perhaps growing) digital divide.