THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

One of the implications of the account above is that the internationalization of the world economy could only have happened with high-speed digital communications. These concurrent developments need to be examined carefully to disentangle those elements that are genuinely novel from those that are simply the intensification of existing tendencies. For example, capitalism has always been associated with international trade and that trade has always been associated with social upheaval. The earliest capitalist epoch, that of mercantilism, generated the largest migration in human history when some 11 million slaves were transported from Africa to the Americas, a cultural impact that has probably never been equalled. It can also be shown as Rediker does in his study The Slave Ship that it was the capacity of a new machine, in this case the slave ship itself that enabled a new form of trade and empire to flourish (Rediker 2007). The period of modern industrial development since the mid-eighteenth century introduced the most rapid and unrelenting social change (Hobsbawm 1987).

Once the demise of peasant and artisanal production was complete the speed of development of new technologies, from steam to petrol to fission, was only equalled by their spread across the face of the world. However, there are still major inconsistencies in access to even the basics of existence, as is indicated by the term ‘least-developed countries’ that now describes the Third World. The promise of industrial capitalism, enjoyed so deeply by some, is still to reach many. This inconsistency is a part of the industrial character of our world and can be seen in its very origins. The Industrial Revolution uprooted traditional small-scale communities, set largescale migrations of workers in process, destroyed traditional craft skills and ways of life, introduced new patterns of work and rhythms of daily life, reconstituted the nature of the family unit and, above all, brought all kinds of production, including cultural production, face to face with the demands of the marketplace.

Populations increased rapidly and were concentrated in new urban industrial centres – traditional institutions of communication and education (church, word of mouth, broadsheets, basic literacy) were outstripped by newer mass media. The scale of the changes begs the question of whether we can really compare the digital revolution with the almighty upheaval of the relatively recent past. Globalisation as purely a product of a technological push into digital media is to succumb to a form of technological determinism. A more complex view offers technology as a cultural construct as well as an influence on culture and human development. For instance, it has been argued that the increased global interconnections facilitated by ICTs offer great potential progress for social change (Featherstone 1990). That this view of the interconnectedness of globalisation and the advent of ICTs should gain widespread support is hardly surprising if we consider the major changes in international relations that have taken place at the same time as the growth of the digital technologies. The ‘new era’ of global geopolitics is contemporaneous with the development of networked communications media. In contrast McChesney et al. (1998) argued that much of what has been called globalisation is rather another version of neo-liberalism (i.e. the opening up of markets to international investment). This local/global relationship is also extremely important in the media industry. Local companies owned by global media businesses such as Sony Bertelsmann Music Group frequently source local products to fit with particular musical styles and tastes. It has also been argued that the possibility of a genuinely global economy is limited by the inability of capitalism to provide the required material resources (Amin 1997).

In other words, that far from delivering social and economic development the very spread of digital media is handicapped by the capitalist economic system within which it came into existence. The disparity between the claims for world dominance of the Internet and its actual spread around the world needs to be kept in mind if we are to develop a more sophisticated and open model of globalisation. Similarly, while corporations and world bodies such as the World Trade Organisation are increasingly important, individual states have considerable power to develop or inhibit the growth of new systems of communications. For example, the reluctance of the Chinese government to allow free access to the Internet is an inhibitory factor just as the enthusiasm of the US government plays a role in its growth. Globalisation, in the preceding account of the development of the post-industrial information economy, has become its own ‘meta-narrative’, implying an unrealistic degree of homogenisation and inevitability. Well-known global processes such as McDonald’s or CocaCola already have regional difference built into their global reach; there is no reason to suppose ICT use should be any different.

In addition, unequal patterns of access are likely to be the dominant shaping factor of the global character of ICT use. Dan Schiller (1999) went further and argued that, if anything, the Internet is likely to exacerbate existing social inequalities. Certainly, access to networked communication is not a global enveloping phenomenon. Servers, despite their rapid spread are still overwhelmingly concentrated in the advanced and developed nations. We will return to these questions of access again.

Overall, these changes in the ways in which capitalism operates work primarily at the level of intensity rather than signifying any significant change in the underlying principles. They make it easier for investors to operate in parts of the economy (or the globe) from which they were previously excluded. However, such changes cannot be simply dismissed as ‘more of the same’ (Garnham 1997). It is vital (and we pay a lot of attention to this subject below) that we hang on to this sense of the way in which the intensification of the practices associated with capitalism has also led to people trying to find ways to maintain community, to keep friendship networks alive, to entertain themselves and to educate themselves and how many of these practices now take place via electronic communications systems, powered by electricity, mobilized via screens and paid for by subscription to incredibly extensive communications networks. In addition to the drive to seek new markets outside national boundaries, enterprises also began to export their manufacturing bases to other countries.

BY MWINYIJUMA REHEMA

BAPRM III - 42686