Will the people who, for whatever reason, cannot access electronic information – and cannot converse with colleagues from around the world on their own computer on their own desk – be consigned to a backwater of human culture?
Predictor: Holderness, Mike
Prediction, in context:In his 1993 article on worldwide electronic communication, Mike Holderness writes: ”The much-heralded age of global electronic communication is … arriving fast. To take just one example, Cable & Wireless is laying thousands of kilometers of fibre-optic cable from Hong Kong into the special economic regions of China. Western and Japanese businesses investing in Shenzen and Guangdong will communicate with their Chinese plants over multiple 64,000 bit-per-second channels. But will these developments divide the world into the ‘information-rich’ and the ‘information poor’? Will the people who, for whatever reason, cannot access electronic information – and cannot converse with colleagues from around the world on their own computer on their own desk – be consigned to a backwater of human culture? Concerns about creating an excluded majority of the unconnected fall under three headings. First, many may find the systems unusable: For example, most of the world’s population cannot practicably use computers in their own languages. Second, the technology itself may be inaccessible. Very many people live and work in places lacking the necessary communications … Third, there are political questions about access to effective education and training to use the technology. The vast bulk of the communication on the Internet originates in the U.S., a country whose educational system professes equal opportunity between the sexes; and still the great majority of that is generated by men. Some ask whether this shows that women are systematically excluded … Technological and commercial developments are … promising to solve the problems of language and of physical access to the network. This leaves the third, and in some ways, the most political question raised by critics. Once a network connection is on place, and a way of charging for it has been worked out, who can or will use it? Even critics of the way technology is applied agree that the problems are the same social and economic issues which apply to the distribution of knowledge by any means.”
Date of prediction: March 2, 1993
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Digital Divide
Name of publication: New Scientist
Title, headline, chapter name: Down and Out on the Electronic Frontier
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.poptel.org.uk/nuj/mike/articles/nsc-elec.htm
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney