The Digital Divide. What Is It, and What Can We Do About It?
Often, it can seem like everyone is on the internet. On some level, most people understand that there are places that do not have access to the internet, but sometimes it can be difficult to understand just how many people that includes, and who they are. As of June 2017, 48.3% of the world population does not have internet access. This gap between those that have access and those who do not is what is known as the digital divide. The gap is not even all across the world. For example, in Africa, only 31.2% of the population has access to the internet, as opposed to 88.1% in North America (although the idea that North America isn’t 100% may in itself be a shock to some people). The discrepancy leans greatly towards already advantaged, developed parts of the world like Europe and North America, while those developing regions already economically disadvantaged, like Africa and Asia find themselves disadvantaged even further. Of course, this means that those regions have a much greater potential for growth and catching up.
On the surface, the solution to this divide seems easy. Just bring internet infrastructure to those regions that do have it. Seems simple right? In some ways it is, but there are a number of questions and issues that need to be addressed. For example, there are different kinds of internet access. Someone who only has access to slow internet on their phone will still be disadvantaged compared to someone who has access to high-speed internet on their powerful computer, especially if they require an internet connection to run their business. There is also the issue of who pays for the infrastructure, as some nations may not be able to afford the kinds of improvements others might. Another issue is that, as regions with lower rates of internet penetration begin to catch up to the developed nations, another kind of digital divide is emerging, called the knowledge divide. The knowledge divide is the idea that those people who have access to the internet are still divided between those who have the skills/knowledge necessary to take full advantage of their digital connections, and those who do not, something that will have to be addressed if the underlying issues of inequality surrounding the digital divide are to be solved. One potential solution to help shrink the knowledge divide is to provide education on how to use digital technology and use these classes to encourage the creation of local content, specifically content that is relevant to the interests of the population, is available in their native language, and is designed to function on the hardware that is most commonly available to that population. An app that only works on the latest cutting-edge smartphone may not be the best creative choice in a region where most of the population does not have access to that phone, for example.
Governments are not the only ones that are trying to solve the digital divide. Corporations and NGO’s also have a number of projects designed to extend internet coverage, with the added advantage that they focus on large regions as opposed to specific nations like many governments do. The two most famous ones are Project Loon by Google and the Aquila drone project by Facebook. Project Loon involves the launching of balloons into the stratosphere over regions without internet and using them as a network that will have internet transmitted to them from facilities on the ground, which will then be transmitted to people on the ground somewhere else. If successful, this project could massively shrink the digital divide, although there may be problems with reliability as the balloons have to be continuously replaced. The Facebook project is using a similar concept, except that instead of balloons, it plans to use solar-powered drones. However, testing on these drones is not yet finished, and it is unclear if they will turn out to be suitable at all (Google originally intended to use drones for their own project, but switched to balloons instead due to this reason). It should be noted that these corporations are, well, corporations, and as such need to make money. That’s not to say that a company can’t make charitable contributions, but these are massive, expensive projects, the kind of projects that companies generally hope to see some return on. In the case of Google and Facebook, both of them already having a large presence on the internet, could see massive increases in potential users. There may be cause for concern that these companies will carry out their projects in a way that gives them advantages over local alternatives.