Digital Divide(s)
NASA Data Center at the Goddard Space Flight Center, United States, 2015
Credit: ep_jhu, 2015 / CC BY NC
Summary
Designed in the late 1960s, the internet enables individuals to connect with one another directly. In a single generation, the confluence of innovations in information science, telecommunications and audiovisual techniques has transformed social life worldwide. A global network of physical infrastructure enables an ever-increasing quantity of information to be circulated and stored. But “digital divides” prevent very many individuals from gaining access to it.
The internet was first mooted in the late 1960s by researchers and the military in the west and launched in 1983. It connects individuals directly using a network of distant computers. Since the early 1990s, investment in research and development has led to the arrival on the market of the web, browsers, search engines, MP3 recording, blogs, online shopping platforms, Wi-Fi, messaging services, social networks, smartphones, high-speed connections and the interactive, participative web 2.0.
Chronology of the Internet, 1957-2017
Comment: This chronology of key moments in the development of the Internet since the late 1950s shows the impact of the United States (in public research and then in the emergence of dominant private actors), the acceleration of technologies and products offered for sale, and the very rapid growth in the number of Internet users within a twenty-year period.
The internet as a global space
In the space of a generation, these innovations in computing, telecommunications and audiovisual media have converged, revolutionizing social life, breaking the age-old links between writing and print, geographical proximity and community, and cumulative learning and reading, to immerse individuals in an uninterrupted flow of information. The information society that has emerged from this revolution is characterized by ubiquity, immediacy, extreme individualization, and the exchange and exploitation of data. It is central to the paradox of the contemporary international order, where power relations between nation states and super-powerful transnational actors play out in a single, deregulated, hyper- networkedspace. The production, storage, exchange, distribution, processing and exploitation of growing quantities of information have become the dominant social and economic activities.
The interoperability of this decentralized structure relies on the global interlinking of unevenly developed elements of physical infrastructure (satellites, underground and maritime cables and optic fibers, routers and root servers), between which information stored in giant data centers can circulate.
Location of domain name root servers, 2018
Comment: Domain name root servers (identified by letters) are intermediaries between a computer and another server that match domain names to IP addresses. They form a dense and hierarchical global network with 13 root servers (of which 10 are in the United States) and their numerous instances (or copies) spread around the world. The map shows a high concentration in Europe and North America. After that come emerging countries and the Middle East, although the correlation between the number of servers and the share of Internet users is not verified everywhere.
Location of data centers, January 2018
Comment: The location of data centers – places for storing information belonging to companies, administrations, and private individuals – is strictly limited, particularly by the need for security and energy availability. As well as a very considerable North/South imbalance and a high concentration in the United States and Europe, the map shows that their location only partly overlaps with the share of Internet users, except in Africa where, as yet, there is little integration.
The growth in requests for domain addresses and names has led to changes in the global protocols for IP addresses. These operations are regulated by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), a Californian non-profit organization recently released from its contract with the United States Department of Commerce. The volume of data generated at the global level is set to multiply by four by 2020 to reach 600 zettabytes. Although most of this data is not stored or passed on, storage capacity is set to increase considerably, particularly since big data analysis is central to both trade and science.
Submarine cables, 1989-2020
Comment: This map of the grid mesh (both current and planned) of submarine cable networks through which most of the world’s telecommunications pass shows both the unequal density in terms of the maritime areas and continents connected, a densification of the oldest routes (North Transatlantic and Transpacific), and also the development of connections between countries of the South and the global network (South Atlantic, Mediterranean, Africa).
Sustained massive investment in infrastructure for the transit, storage and security of data is vital to maintain the frenetic growth of a system on which every society in the world depends and where almost all the actors are private.
Digital divides
The integration into the information world of individuals who may be more or less combined into
communities sharing values or professional, entertainment or commercial interests is not a universal phenomenon, and nor does it guarantee social integration. Many people are excluded from either access or use, despite developments in the countries of the South, the terrain of choice for telecommunications companies. The International Telecommunication Union advocates reducing the digital divide in the name of the basic right to communicate. The term digital divide covers very different situations and is based on a highly technical vision. Many have identified the paradoxical role of information and communications technology (ITC) as a source of both growth and many forms of inequality. Although in 2016, 95 % of the world’s population lived in a zone covered by a mobile network (84 % broadband), for those living in rural areas the proportion falls to 67 % and this unequal access to infrastructure (connectivity and electricity) combines with issues of reliability, speed, connection costs for individuals, generation (digital natives and digital immigrants), gender, and education (ability to learn to use the technology and make social use of it).
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Development Index, 2017
Comment: To measure the spread of the information society worldwide, the International Telecommunication Union publishes an annual report on ICT. The 11 indicators concern access (telephone, bandwidth, computers and internet), their use, and the skills required (levels of literacy and education). The map shows that there are still considerable gaps between countries despite rapid development, especially in Africa.
A total 53 % of the world’s population did not use the internet in 2016 (22 % of Europeans, 75 % of Africans). These people excluded from the global digital world are heavily penalized in areas ranging from employability to citizenship. More generally, the circulation of texts and images is increasing to the detriment of content quality, which exposes the most vulnerable individuals to failure, disinformation and even manipulation by identity entrepreneurs. However, new entrants are bringing innovations, for example in Africa, where cell phones have an increasing role in economic and social development (devices with multiple SIM cards, low-cost battery charging, phone-based payments, money transfers and medical diagnoses, distance learning and the participatory mapping of social spaces and resources).
- internet > Internet
- Global interconnection of local IT networks facilitating the exchange of texts, images, sound and video by means of a standard protocol (TCP/IP). Invented by researchers and the military in the US in the 1960s, the network has been steadily growing, spreading and innovating ever since. At the start of the 1990s, browsers made the internet accessible to the general public. High-speed connections have permitted increasingly large data transfers, driving a proliferation of online activities and the transition from an information storage approach to a logic of continuous flows. The community-based and interactive Web 2.0 stimulates interactions between users, changes social behaviors and alters forms of engagement by giving them instant visibility. Internet censorship is regularly practiced by non-democratic states. The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the connection between this network and connected objects of various kinds.
- individuals > Individual
- The individual, as a basic social actor, is playing an increasingly important role in the processes of globalization for multiple reasons, including the ever-faster circulation of ideas, values and information; the ability to build networks for sharing and solidarity without physical proximity; the networking of international expertise; and human rights movements and demands for democracy.
- network > Network
- Classical geography tended to place too much importance on surface areas, territories, countries and soil, but network analysis has now become central to its approach. Networks are defined as spaces in which distance is discontinuous and consists of nodes linked by lines. Some are physical (networks for the transportation of people, goods and energy, IT cables and information super highways), others not. When they are partly virtual (such as the internet), they also involve individuals and organizations. Philosophers (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), sociologists (Manuel Castells), political scientists (James Rosenau), and economists use this concept to analyze the interconnected functioning of individuals.
- flow > Flows
- Increasing flows of goods and assets, tangible and intangible, of capital and of people are characteristic of the globalization processes currently underway. This cross-border mobility constitutes a spatial phenomenon that geographers and cartographers, focused as they have been on territory, have been relatively slow to examine. These flows are organized in networks of varying degrees of density, not because territories and places are similar and interchangeable but because they are different and interdependent. They presuppose infrastructures (submarine cables, oil and gas pipelines, routes via land, sea, river and air) and logistics businesses (intermodal ports, freight airports, e-commerce warehouses, data hubs, etc.).
- ubiquity > Ubiquity
- Ubiquity is the ability to be everywhere at the same time. Theological in origin and referring to divine omnipresence, it was re-used by French poet and thinker Paul Valéry to refer to art of the interwar period and is now widely used in computer science and the social and life sciences. Ubiquity is a characteristic of the digital society, its technologies, actors and habits, which the internet of things will render all the more apparent as wireless connectivity is rolled out.
- power > Power
- Ability of political actors to impose their will on others. Comparable to the notion of authority within a nation, power is never absolute but has its existence in a relationship, since power relations are a matter of each actor’s perception of the other. Power is key to the realist approach to international relations, where it is understood in geostrategic terms (hard power is based on force and coercion, especially of a military nature). The transnationalist approach offers a more diversified vision including factors of influence (Joseph Nye’s soft power exerted in economic, cultural and other terms) and emphasizing the importance of controlling different orders of power, from hard to soft (Susan Strange’s “structural power”).
- transnational actors > Transnational actor
- Transnational actors function across the world space, either alone or in networks, outside the framework of nation-states. They partly escape state control and intervention.
- networked > Network
- Classical geography tended to place too much importance on surface areas, territories, countries and soil, but network analysis has now become central to its approach. Networks are defined as spaces in which distance is discontinuous and consists of nodes linked by lines. Some are physical (networks for the transportation of people, goods and energy, IT cables and information super highways), others not. When they are partly virtual (such as the internet), they also involve individuals and organizations. Philosophers (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), sociologists (Manuel Castells), political scientists (James Rosenau), and economists use this concept to analyze the interconnected functioning of individuals.
- space > Space
- A term with multiple meanings and uses and a category given far less consideration by philosophers than the concept of time. Space as a concept has long been a theoretical difficulty (lack of consensus) for geographers – for whom it should be the primary object of study. Contrary to the common representation of space as a natural expanse filled by societies, space is a social product that is constantly reconstructed by social interactions. It constitutes one of the dimensions of our social life, at once material and cultural. To speak of social space does not in itself tell us what form this space takes – whether it is territorial, or networked, or both at once.
- root servers > Root Server
- A server is a machine connected to a network that provides information and services to its clients in the form of messages sent to computers. A single server provides its clients (user, computer or another software program) with several services at once. A root server (duplicated on several servers across the world) contains all the data matching the domain names and IP addresses on the internet. The thirteen root servers are managed and coordinated by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), a California-based nonprofit organization. There are many calls for transferring responsibility for the regulation of the internet to an international body under the aegis of the UN.
- growth > Growth
- A long-term, sustained increase in a country’s production of economic wealth, in other words, its GDP. Economic growth is not synonymous with development. Measuring it with purely economic and monetary tools is becoming increasingly unsatisfactory because of the deterritorialization and internationalization of economic activities, as well as the failure to take account of any wealth creation that cannot be monetized (elimination of illiteracy, gains in scientific or cultural knowledge, etc.). This implies special emphasis on high productivity despite the potential destruction (especially ecological) caused by growth that is seen exclusively from the angle of economics and financial profitability.
- communities > Community
- According to the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936), community (Gemeinschaft) is the opposite of society (Gesellschaft) and denotes any form of social organization in which individuals are linked by natural or spontaneous solidarity, and driven by common goals. According to current usage, it applies to any social grouping that appears to be united, whatever its mode of integration (international community, European or Andean Community, or adherents of a religion). The ambiguous term of international community describes an ill-defined set of political actors (states, international organizations, NGOs, individuals, etc.) based on the idea of that humanity is united by common objectives and values or an allegiance to central political institutions, which is far from being the case.
- integration > Integration
- Concept with multiple uses. The opposite of “segregation,” with reference to the incorporation of foreigners within host societies, “integration” means more than just inclusion by juxtaposition (multiculturalism) but is different from assimilation. Spatial integration refers to the progressive incorporation of peripheral, marginalized spaces within a central spatial system. The problem of social disintegration occurs when groups experience multiple types of exclusion at once: economic, social, political and spatial. The globalization processes that are connecting societies but maintaining or deepening social, economic, health and cultural disparities between and within these societies, are creating and reproducing a global social integration deficit that is increasingly apparent to those excluded.
- inequality > Inequality
- Unequal distribution of goods, material and/or non-material, regarded as necessary or desirable. Beyond income inequality (national, international and global), cumulative inequalities can also be measured with respect to accessing public services (healthcare, education, employment, housing, justice, effective security, etc.) and accessing property and natural resources more generally, and also relative to political expression or the capacity to respond to ecological risks. When these inequalities are based on criteria prohibited by law, they constitute discrimination.
- gender > Gender
- Historic, social, cultural and psychological construction of a binary categorization between sexes (men/women) and between the values and representations associated with them (masculine/feminine). Arising from the feminist works of the 1970s, the concept of gender spread through the United States during the 1980s and then in Europe from the 1990s before being taken up in the literature on sexual minorities. The gender concept views relations between the sexes as a power relationship (historically constructed around the material and symbolic subordination of women compared to men) that cannot be isolated from other power relationships such as social class, race, age or disability.
- citizenship > Citizen
- The origin of citizenship goes back to Antiquity, and it denotes the enjoyment of civic and political rights within democratic regimes (right to vote, right of eligibility, exercise of public freedoms). By granting rights and obligations to citizens, popular sovereignty provides the foundation for the state’s legitimacy. Citizenship is an element of social cohesion, with citizens forming a political community (theory of the social contract) to which they owe primary allegiance. Depending on the period and country, it has been refused to some sections of the population: women, slaves, the poor, the illiterate, soldiers, foreigners, or minors. The Maastricht Treaty (1992) created a European citizenship within the European Union.
- circulation > Circulation
- People, merchandise, services, capital, information, ideas, values, and models are being transferred and exchanged in ever-increasing numbers. The expansion, diversification, and acceleration of movement typify the ongoing process of globalization. Circulation connects economic and social spaces through networks which, depending on their density, fluidity, output, and hierarchy, can differentiate them considerably. Of all types of circulation, information in the broadest sense is experiencing the most rapid growth, whereas the circulation of people is the one encountering most obstacles.
- identity entrepreneurs > Political entrepreneur
- An entrepreneur, as defined by Max Weber, manages an organized group that has an administrative management and pursues a specific goal. An identity or religious entrepreneur, then, is an actor who mobilizes symbols of identity or religion for the benefit of their political, social or economic capital.