Is the Internet a great equalizer, a democratizing factor? Or is it another source of inequality between and within nations and societies, giving rise to the so-called digital divide? Is the new information technology class- or income-neutral, which can be as useful to the poor as to the rich, provided it becomes affordable and universally accessible?
Harvard professor of political communications Pippa Norris talks of three kinds of digital divides in the contemporary world. The global divide refers to the divergence of Internet access between industrialized and developing countries. The social divide refers to the gap between the information rich and poor within each nation while the democratic divide "signifies the difference between those who do, and do not, use the panoply of digital resources to engage, mobilize, and participate in politics and the public life."
Statistics from various sources show the dimensions of these divides, especially for the Philippines. Two organizations, the online newspaper World Times, and the International Data Corporation (IDC), have jointly developed the Information Society Index (ISI), the world's first measure of a nation's ability to participate in the digital information revolution, of which the Internet is the most ubiquitous feature. The ISI establishes a standard by which "nations are measured according to their ability to access and absorb information and information technology." It measures information capacity and wealth. The ISI is a composite measure of some 23 variables clustered into four groups: computer infrastructure (e.g., PCs installed per capita), information infrastructure (e.g., telephone lines per household), internet infrastructure (e.g., business internet users per non-agricultural workforce), and social infrastructure (e.g., tertiary school enrollment).
In the latest ISI rankings, only 55 countries (including the Philippines) accounts for almost all, at 98%, of all IT in some 150 countries. This gives you a rough measure of the global divide. The 2001 ISI rankings classify nations into four categories. Nations with ISI scores above 3500 are aptly called "skaters", judged to be in a "strong position to take full advantage of the Information Revolution because of advanced information, computer, Internet, and social infrastructures." Some 24 countries, or almost half of the 55, are classified as skaters. The Scandinavian countries ranked on top (Sweden, 1st; Norway, 2nd; Finland, 3rd; and Denmark, 5th) while the US ranked fourth. The highest ranking Asia-Pacific economies are Australia (8th), Singapore (9th), Japan (11th), Hongkong (15th), Taiwan (18th), and Korea (19th). The others in the top 10 include the United Kingdom (6th), Switzerland (7th), and the Netherlands (10th). The lowest ranking skater is Spain.
The next category includes the "striders" (with ISI scores above 2000)—judged as "moving purposely into the information age, with much of the necessary infrastructure in place." Some fourteen countries are classified as striders with Portugal (25th), Greece (26th) and the Czech Republic (27th) topping the list. The highest ranking Asian strider is Malaysia (32nd) while the highest ranking Latin American strider is Argentina (31st), followed by Chile (33rd). The highest ranking strider in the Middle East is the United Arab Emirates (28th). South Africa (38th), the only strider from the African continent, is lowest ranking strider.
Some 16 countries, including the Philippines, occupy the next category of "sprinters" (with ISI scores above 1000)—evaluated as "moving forward in spurts before needing to catch their breath and shift priorities because of economic, social and political pressures." Venezuela (39th) and Russia (40th) are the highest ranking sprinters while Indonesia (53rd) and India (54th) are at the bottom. With an identical ISI score of 1563, Thailand (47th) and the Philippines (48th) are halfway between sprinting and strolling on the information highway.
Only one country, Pakistan (55th) is classified as a "stroller" (with ISI score below 1000). A stroller may be "moving ahead but inconsistently so, often because of limited financial resources in relation to their vast populations."
Save for South Africa, no other country from Africa is listed among the ISI 55. This makes the Dark Continent also the equivalent of a digital black hole.
In the next column, the dimensions of the social and democratic divide in the Philippines will be discussed.
