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MODELING OF DIGITAL FUTURES 295

Educated urban elites from currency-weak chances, access quality, and opportunities for
countries appear on the same side of the dig- usage.
ital divide as the middle classes of post- Studies of Internet access in the USA
industrial countries. Digital inequalities exist during the late 1990s pointed to a ‘digital
across and within countries. divide’ along the lines of income, education,
A brief glimpse at the diffusion patterns of age, gender, and rural/urban (US Department
television sets can provide some indication of Commerce, 1995, 1998). According to
of the ability to save up funds over long peri- more recent data however, these divides tend
ods of time to acquire a popular but some- to disappear, except for the most disadvan-
what costly electronic device. Television sets taged parts of the population, including the
are appliances that depend neither on a wired poor and the disabled (US Department of
infrastructure nor on sophisticated skills for Commerce, 2000). Yet digital inequalities are
their use, and they have had several decades not only a matter of having or not having
for their diffusion. While the average number basic access, but also a qualitative issue with
of TV sets per 100 inhabitants is well above educational and socio-economic aspects,
80 in the USA, the equivalent figures in the beyond technological aspects narrowly con-
Latin American countries mentioned above ceived. What one can do with access,
range from 14% to 32%. The diffusion rates depends on the bandwidth and speed, on nav-
for TV sets illustrate the limitations of igational skills (Hargittai, 2001), and the
market-driven distribution models insofar as capacities to process information critically
they show that these electronic devices could and communicate effectively within multi-
be obtained by some part of the population media environments. In addition, more and
but not by others, and that the portion of the more commercial service sites require extra-
population that was able to acquire them is payments for access; while the expanding
several times smaller than that in the USA. corporate intranets are password protected
and off-limits to outsiders (Sassen, 1997).
Whereas findings valid for the USA case
might not be totally different from those for
DIGITAL INEQUALITIES other post-industrial countries, these cannot
be further generalized to cover the situation
Whereas much of the emerging sociology of in the global South which seems to be strik-
cyberspace has focused on domestic aspects ingly different.
of leading OECD countries, this article advo- Why are digital inequalities a problem?
cates a global and comparative perspective Are there not more urgent concerns in coun-
that takes into account the experiences and tries in which basic needs for clean drinking
conditions of both center and periphery. The water, nutrition, sanitation, shelter, health,
restructuring of communicative relations is and basic education are not met? Is not the
global, though not globally uniform. The tra- diffusion of new technologies just a matter of
jectories of regulation, usage, and impact of the time it takes to trickle down to the late-
the NICT vary widely between world comers? The problem we are witnessing is a
regions, across and within countries. Current widening of the gap between those who are
trends point to very unequal chances for par- well-off and those who are marginalized and
ticipating in the emerging network structures excluded. Those who can connect to cyber-
and public spheres of incipient global civil space can use it for their social, economic,
society (Castells, 1996; Sassen, 1997; and political benefit. Let me illustrate the
Schulz, 2001a; Wellman, 1999). The modes potential importance of access to NICT for
of NICT implementation and regulation at marginalized groups with two examples. In
national and global levels have a decisive the perhaps most famous case, the Zapatista
impact upon the distribution of access rebels in Chiapas gained world-wide attention