New IT and Social Inequality: resetting the research and Policy Agenda

Are new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) such as the Internet and the World Wide Web a boon to poor countries and poor people around the globe, enabling them to leapfrog their underdevelopment and become equal partners in an emerging global order? Or, have the new technologies , introduced into an asymmetric global system, already become an engine of greater social inequality? There are few questions more important to the evolution of the global system, and few questions on which there is less agreement. Yes, the new ICTs are unequivocally an engine of inequality, according to the highly respected UN Development Program’s (UNDP) annual publication, “The Human Development Report.” The UNDP Ž nds that, “The Internet is contributing to an ever-widening gap between rich and poor which has now reached ‘grotesque’ proportions” (UNDP Press Release, 12 July 1999, p. 1). But according to the highly respected annual “World Development Report” (WDR) of the World Bank the new ICTs are quite positive and have tremendous equalizing potential. The WDR points to dozens of stories showing that telemedicine, distance education, and falling ICT costs are having positive and dramatic impacts on the growth prospects of poor people and poor countries (Knowledge for Development, World Development Report, 1998/99). It seems that for the World Bank, the glass is more than half-full. For the UNDP, it is less than half-empty. If one thing is clear, it is that highly contested questions have bubbled to the surface regarding the impacts of the new ICTs on the poor. It is precisely at such moments that research and scholarship can make a valuable global contribution . For example, researchers can rephrase the World Bank-UNDP dispute as follows: “What will it take for countries and international organizations to achieve the positive outcomes described by the Bank and avoid the negative consequences described by the UNDP?” And,