Digital Divide Complacency: Misconceptions and Dangers

In the United States an intense debate has taken place between those wishing to minimize the digital divide and others who are skeptical of this view. In regard to the global digital divide, by contrast, although a similar type of complacency can be found, it has not yet been seriously debated. This article, accordingly, hopes to initiate such a discussion. It attacks the notions that information technology can be easily compared with the earlier diffusion of consumer durable goods, that the divide can be made to disappear by redefining the issue, and that the global divide can be analyzed without the help of basic knowledge from fields such as innovation studies, technology and development, and the diffusion of process innovations.