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T he term digital divide usuallyrefers to the great disparitiesbetween and within societiesin the use of digital technol-ogy. This month, the United

Nations is holding a World Summit onthe Information Society (WSIS: www.itu.int/wsis/index.html) to adopt a dec-laration that embodies, in its draftform at least, “the ambitious vision”of “bridging the Digital Divide.” Thedeclaration’s hopes focus on

the rapid pace of development ofICTs [information and communica-tion technologies]—unprecedented inhistory—which allows for the devel-opment of applications that make itpossible that no one is left behind andthat those who were left marginalisedin previous development cycles canhave a real opportunity to attainhigher levels of development withouthaving to follow the traditional pathnor its time requirements.

THE COMPUTING PROFESSIONWe might think that a UN summit

focused on the application of digitaltechnology would enjoy the participa-tion of professional bodies, particularlythose representing engineers and com-puting professionals. The list of “enti-

ties involved” does include the Inter-national Federation for InformationProcessing and the International Insti-tute for Applied Systems Analysis. But,considering that the list contains morethan 2,000 entities of bewildering vari-ety, the participation of engineers andcomputing professionals seems purelynominal.

More significant is the shorter list ofthe partner organizations of the UnitedNations Information and Communi-cation Technologies Task Force, themain—or at least professionally mostrelevant—body behind the summit(www.unicttaskforce.org). My classifi-cation of these organizations yields 15political bodies, divided into eight UNand seven national government bodies;13 commercial bodies, of which eightare corporations like Cisco andHewlett Packard; and seven or eightmiscellaneous minor organizations.

This line-up makes it no surprisethat the draft declaration embodies abizarre farrago of largely ideologicaland often contradictory platitudes.The draft action plan isn’t much bet-ter. Thus, I consider it highly unlikelythat the outcome of this UN summitwill be any more effective than the out-come of recent World Trade Organi-zation meetings.

THE PROFESSIONAL APPROACHThe UNICTTF list’s most significant

feature, however, is the completeabsence of professional bodies of anykind. Perhaps this absence stems fromprofessional organizations’ disinclina-tion to either take part in an apparentboondoggle or to appear to support themost likely outcome of such an event.

Whatever the reason, their absenceis deplorable. Professional people, dis-sociated from business and politics, arebest qualified to thump the table, insiston purposeful and effective approachesto solving problems, inform the deci-sion makers of the nature and signifi-cance of technical realities, and advisethem of different solutions’ relativefeasibility and benefits.

When solving problems profession-ally, we must first define each prob-lem’s scope and nature. The “am-bitious vision” makes it clear that thepeople behind WSIS take the problemto be the digital divide. A moment’sinformed thought should confirm thatthe digital divide represents only onesymptom of the chasms that increas-ingly divide rich nations from poor andthe rich within nations from their poor,as the United Nations Development

The Digital Divide,the UN, and theComputingProfessionNeville Holmes, University of Tasmania

T H E P R O F E S S I O N

Continued on page 142

The world needs thecomputing profession,but do the politicians want us?

142 Computer

T h e P r o f e s s i o n

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGYWhen tackling the problem of sus-

tained economic production, we can—whether we agree with him or not—consider eminent capitalist GeorgeSoros’ views on the global capitalistsystem’s deficiencies (www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jan/opensoc.htm). Sorosputs these deficiencies into five classes,thereby providing an analytical struc-ture for examining the close linksbetween digital technology and globalcapitalism:

• The benefits of global capitalismare unevenly distributed. Digitaltechnology makes capital andprofits much more mobile thanlabor and goods, providing per-haps the most important of thosefactors that “combine to attractcapital to the financial center [ofthe global economy] and accountfor the ever increasing size andimportance of financial markets.”

• Financial markets are inherentlyunstable, and international finan-cial markets are especially so.Soros makes many commentsregarding market equilibrium andeconomic theory. But apart fromthis, we should note that digitaltechnology has both enabled theformation of a global financial sys-tem more complex than thenational ones it replaced andgreatly reduced the system’s reac-tion time to disturbances. Com-plex systems with small timeconstants are inherently less stable,as the recent catastrophic failuresof integrated electricity distribu-tion systems—such as those thathave repeatedly blacked out muchof northeast North America—show.

• Instability is not confined to thefinancial system, however. The

Programme has long persistently andfruitlessly documented (www.undp.org).

The draft declaration states, “Weare aware that technology alone can-not solve any political and social prob-lems. ICTs should therefore beregarded as a tool and not an end inthemselves.” But the declarationshows no awareness that the basicproblem’s severity might spring at leastpartly from the use of digital tech-nologies, or even that digital technolo-gies might be completely irrelevant inmany circumstances—as they must be,for example, to the 24,000 people who die of hunger daily (www.thehungersite.com).

Another principle of problem solv-ing dictates that we understand theproblem’s causes. In understandinggross social inequity, a system analyst’sskills become relevant. One commoneconomic argument denies the exis-tence of the problem on the groundsthat per capita gross domestic productor average annual income is increasingeverywhere. This may be true. But asystem analyst could point out that

• the subjective inequity is inwealth, not productivity or in-come;

• the ability to acquire wealth in amonetary society depends on anexcess of income over living costs;

• wealth once acquired acceleratesits own growth; and

• this results in a dumbbell effect—the wealthy naturally get wealth-ier while the poor get relativelypoorer.

Once defined, a problem must beplaced in its full context. The UN WSISdeclaration repeatedly places overrid-ing importance on increased economicdevelopment. Yet we have reason todoubt that global conditions will let ussustain present levels of economic pro-duction much longer, much less supportincreased production levels (www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4782372,00.html).

goal of competitors is to prevail,not to preserve competition in themarket. Digital technology pro-vides an effective tool for avidcompetitors. Successful compa-nies typically become more suc-cessful by reducing their costs, andlarge companies are much moreable than small companies toreduce costs by exploiting digitaltechnology. If it’s only stabilitywe’re after, monopolies or oligop-olies might be the best result,except that some think they makea much bigger mess when they doeventually crash.

• Since the end of the Second WorldWar the state has played anincreasing role in maintaining eco-nomic stability, striving to ensureequality of opportunity, and pro-viding a social safety net, particu-larly in the highly industrializedcountries of Europe and NorthAmerica. But the capacity of thestate to look after the welfare ofits citizens has been severelyimpaired by the globalization ofthe capitalist system. Digital tech-nology has made global privateenterprises spectacularly success-ful. Yet corporations and a fewprivate citizens in developed coun-tries own or control most of theseenterprises, exerting an influenceso profound that governmentsand major political parties havewholeheartedly adopted an econ-omy-first approach to policy andlegislation. This is particularlynoticeable here in Australia.

• Every society needs some sharedvalues to hold it together. Marketvalues on their own cannot servethat purpose…. We can have amarket economy but we cannothave a market society. This Sorosconsiders to be “the most nebu-lous problem area.” His concernis also the most relevant to WSIS,given that the IS in WSIS standsfor information society—the areain which digital technology hasmost significance.

Continued from page 144

In understanding gross social inequity,

a system analyst’s skillsbecome relevant.

opment cycles.” Two assumptionsunderpin this statement:

• societies in the developed worldhave benefited from technologicaldevelopment, and

• what will benefit the developedworld will ipso facto benefit theundeveloped world.

We can doubt from a social view-point the net benefits of technology,considering the gross social inequitiesthat have developed in the so-calledadvanced countries since digital tech-nology’s widespread adoption. Cer-tainly, we can reasonably doubt thatdigital technology should be used inthe Third World in the same way it hasbeen used in the First World.

The UN declaration properly empha-sizes education. Unfortunately, it alsoimplies that the First World’s educa-tional system should be brought to thepoor world and that digital technologywill play a central role in delivering it.

This brings us back to Soros’ fifthproblem—the shared values that a suc-cessful society must have. Educationprovides the means for maintaining tra-ditional shared values; thus, the familyand professional educators, not digitaltechnology, provide education’s essen-tial and principal tools. The educationalsystem’s failure to maintain traditionalsocial values in a world where, fre-quently, no family exists to perform thatrole, provides the most likely reason forthe First World’s social gaps.

In this vacuum, marketeers choosesocial values and use media such astelevision, video games, and, increas-ingly, the Internet and its Web (www.nybooks.com/articles/16746) to instillthem. In response, innumeracy andilliteracy increase steadily while inor-alcy—the inability to communicate

Readers who assume Soros argues forabandoning capitalism will be mis-taken and should consult the citedpaper or www.soros.org.

THE INFORMATION SOCIETYThe WSIS draft declaration’s unbri-

dled enthusiasm for the informationsociety depicts it as a new kind of paradise. The computing professioncould give this view a more realisticperspective.

Human societies and primates ingeneral have always formed informa-tion societies, as delightfully displayedin the last two episodes of DavidAttenborough’s The Life of Mammals.Recent digital technologies have givenus extremely cheap machines for gen-erating, displaying, storing, and trans-mitting data: representations of theideas that in the human mind canbecome information. New, at least intheir intensity, are the industries thathave arisen to exploit data commer-cially.

The very cheapness of modernmachinery would ordinarily ensureplenty of competition for data-basedindustries, but global corporations usepatent and copyright monopolies tohamper if not completely suppresscompetition. They also use digital tech-nologies to enforce their monopolies.Indeed, the World Intellectual PropertyOrganization, a UNICTTF partner, “isdedicated to promoting the use andprotection of … intellectual property”(www.unicttaskforce.org/stakeholders/partnerships/partnerships_txt.asp).

Thus, when the UN declarationaffirms that “In building such an infor-mation society, the ability for all toaccess and contribute their information,ideas and knowledge is essential,” thissentiment seems platitudinous indeed inthe face of commercial reality. Most dis-turbingly, this passage and the declara-tion as a whole give the impression thatthe world should aim to create a single,uniform, information society by usingdigital technology to bring the devel-oped world’s benefits to “those whowere left marginalised in previous devel-

orally—has become a problem in pri-mary schools (news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/3239861.stm).

A lthough I believe the WSIS isdoomed to failure, it forms onlypart of an effort scheduled to go

on until at least 2005. This work offersall professionals, and particularly com-puting professionals, an opportunityto urge their representative bodies topress for a formal role in the WSISsequels and similarly important inter-national endeavors.

Professionals who can do so shouldvolunteer to support their professionalbodies and other organizations in anyactivities that seek to better both theirown and international society. Digitaltechnology has a great potential forsupporting such efforts. The difficultylies in realizing that potential. �

Neville Holmes is an honoraryresearch associate in the School ofComputing on the Launceston campusof the University of Tasmania. Contacthim at neville.holmes@utas.edu.au.Details of the citations in this essay,and links to further material, are atwww.comp.utas.edu.au/users/nholmes/prfsn/.

Global corporations use digital technologies

to enforce their monopolies.

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