DIGITAL ETHICS IN BRIDGING DIGITAL DIVIDE

Subhajit Basu, Queen's University Belfast

Abstract

The digital divide disempowers, discriminates, and generates dependency. The question is how to deal with the problem of the digital divide? The politically intriguing idea of implementing a generic and adoptable model for ‘bridging digital divide’ clashes with the understanding that each country and region has its own peculiarities, constitution, and legal and political framework. The idea is simply unrealistic. It is not a matter of imposing legislative measures, strict regulations or empowering some controlling organization. One of the objectives at the World Summit on the Information Society was to build a global consensus around a core ethical values and principles for information society. Genetics has bio-ethics; doesn't wisdom also demand that we develop digital-ethics?

ICT has already posed fundamental ethical problems, whose complexity and global dimensions are rapidly evolving. Technologies are not only tools, but also vehicles of affordances, values and interpretations of the surrounding reality, like hermeneutic devices. The objective is to formulate universally recognised principles and common ethical standards for bridging digital divide. In this presentation I have far more questions than I have answers. Because, these are the questions, we normally avoid when we discuss about DD. I will not be able to give a list of potential solutions, because I don’t have one. But I will give the reasons why I have the questions.

Our information society is creating parallel systems: one for those with income, education and literacy connections, giving plentiful information at low cost and high speed: the other are those without connections, blocked by high barriers of time, cost and uncertainty and dependent upon outdated information. Hence it can be expressed the DD is nothing but a reflection of social divide. The question is what is the best strategy to construct an information society that is ethically sound? Most people have the views that ICT and underlying ideologies are neutral. This Technology has become so much naturalized that it can no longer be viewed as anything other than being useful, even when it has the potential to change profoundly the critical developmental priorities of a country.

Investment in ICT will not produce growth in developing countries unless it is supported by complementary policies. ICT for development holds very important promises, yet this is only a belief, and although some do argue that it is quite a credible belief, but still it remains a belief, as we have seen repeatedly from ICT4 Development impact reports. The divide exists because there is an error both in focus and approach as policy makers in this field started from an erroneous approach and continued working with the logical framework of a previous social paradigm, where society never participated in the decision making process. I argue that since the digital divide is a problem affecting individuals rather than pre-established whole societies, solutions can be more effective if they are grassroots-oriented and bottom up?

What we need is a more balanced approach between promotions of social goals through devices such as universal service obligations and recognizing country specific needs (greater voice for developing countries in international regulatory agencies). It is more about proposing policies of promoting national e-strategies in developing countries, prioritizing ICT in aid funding, improving connectivity, and building human capacity.

In an earlier paper I suggested technological “leapfrogging” will enable the poor to catch up. As latecomers, developing countries can embrace existing technologies developed elsewhere and skip intermediate stages allowing them to save on considerable costs of development. However, now I feel that there is more to this argument: There is a fundamental duality: technology “for development” and technology “in developing” countries. Two streams represent diverse sets of objectives, which are currently being conflated and even used interchangeably. Developing countries needs to promote their own technology. As premature standardization can become impediments to technological innovations in these countries and can be counterproductive.

ICT promises to change the world around us, what does that mean? Information society as we understand is dominated by an arguably narrow range of ideological viewpoints. It can cause new forms of colonialism that must be prevented, opposed and ultimately eradicated. But unfortunately what we are witnessing is contrasting notions of cyber colonialism, a colonizing of cultures by a diverse array of western ICT ideologies. We know there is a ‘divide’ because we were told so.

The concept of Discourse Analysis of Colonialism first developed in Edward Said’s 1978 work Orientalism. Said argued that the “orient” is constructed by Western discourses as “other”, and represented as primitive, dependent upon Western expertise and in need of being controlled. This is quite analogous to the way developed countries are now dictating and dominating the ‘information society’ with its expertise of ICT in relation to the developing world. It is difficult to deny the role of these cybersuperpowers and control in the creation of a technological “other”. The ‘other’ lacks what is assumed to be the more efficient collection, exchange, and distribution of information to which those with the necessary hardware, software, and technical skills have access. These disparities are far from coincidence and are largely attributed to the unfair international economic system, which, it can be argued, benefits the developed countries at the expense of the less developed countries.

We are thinking about bridging the divide but at whose terms? The question is the relationship exploitive where one party likely to be advantaged more than the other as the relationship unfolds? Or is it reciprocal in which each party benefits to a similar degree? How do we determine this? It can be fairly easily demonstrated: If the developing countries continue to depend on the developed countries for expertise and control, can we say that we have managed to bridge the divide? Before the Internet, the global agenda and public debates within territorially defined political spaces were mainly set by Western transnational media agencies. They were tools used by the dominant centres of power to manufacture consent and shape the contours of public ideology for their own interests. In terms of ICT it is again a relationship which many in the developing world realize that they have little options but to utilise the technology from within the operating ethos and intellectual structures fostered mainly by American techno-visionaries. So an uneven relationship exists. Have we superimposed ICT ideologies of west upon the ‘Rest’?

As I said before Information society is about individuals (an information only becomes useful and hence valuable if and only if the individual understands that information).So the usefulness and the value is ultimately dependent on what gets disseminated. Paradoxically, across political and cultural contexts abundance of information provided by the Internet has not necessarily created an abundance of usable knowledge. It is clear that the digital divide is a multi-faceted social problem, requiring a multi-faceted intervention. Nearly all related studies agree that the fundamental solution lies beyond a mere consideration of information availability and infrastructure; they call for governments to interfere with the deep-rooted factors which have directly or indirectly caused this situation. The technological power available is enormous. It is also growing relentlessly. Our Moral responsibilities towards the world and future generations are therefore equally enormous. Unfortunately, technological power and moral responsibilities are not necessarily followed by ethical intelligence and wisdom. We are still like children, light-heartedly and dangerously toying with a marvellous universe.