The Digital Divide

As society's dependency on technology increases, so the risk increases of creating both dangerous systems and restrictive systems. Technological dependency has a tendency to limit choice implicitly or explicitly as resource availability reduces for maintaining non-technological facilities. There is an increasing need within society to be computer literate. However, it will be several generations before the digital solution is widely accepted as the traditional and obvious solution. Acceptance is affected by whether a sense of ownership of systems exists within the using community. Such challenges point to the need on the part of planners and developers of systems to accept their social responsibility and act in a way that addresses the digital divide. Lack of education, poverty, and technology aversion all play their part in sustaining the digital divide.

People's perception of IT is an important factor in realizing the huge societal benefit that IT offers. In an international survey by British Telecommunications (1998), people were asked whether they felt advances in information and communication technologies would have a positive or negative effect on aspects of their lives. More than 40% of people globally felt there would be a positive effect on the amount of leisure time available, but interestingly more than 40% of people globally felt it would have a negative effect on the amount of human contact. This feeling was particularly strong in the U.S. (67%) and South Africa (84%). More than 70% of people globally felt it would have positive effect on flexible working. Such perceptions of ICT, causing major changes in work, leisure, and the way people interact, need to be borne in mind by all involved in providing systems. As part of their social responsibility, providers need to be sensitive of such perceptions and work with those directly and indirectly affected to allay their fears concerning, for example, redundancy and becoming disenfranchised.