Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 127
Materiality disperses virtuality: the many faces
of mobility and poverty
It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened
the day’s toil of any human being. (John Stuart Mill)
The concerns discussed in the previous section represent those of powerful
multinationals based largely in the triad regions of Asia, Europe and
North America, where national governments with more international
clout push for the importance of ICTs to create new markets. These
changes in the nation-state’s relationship with the transnational ICT industries
reflect the changing logic of industrial and post-industrial expansion.
For example, the agricultural sector in Europe has decreased
significantly in the last twenty years but this has not created any famine
crisis, since the productivity of the sector and the availability of food
per person have actually increased. 4 Figures 5.1 to 5.4 offer a ‘world’
view on the rate of Internet and PC use across five continents. If one
of the most significant criterion to measure the degree to which a society
has become an Information Society is the diffusion and use of ICTs,
evident through the use of personal computers and connectivity to the
world network of computers through the Internet, then it becomes obvious
that the story of a ‘global village’ is necessarily deeply fractured and
uneven.
As the figures show, according to the best estimations, only 10 per cent
of the world’s population are ‘networked’ today. The new inequalities
reinforce previous colonial divides, with half of the current 10 per cent
Internet users per 10000 inhabitants
5000
4500
4000
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
4301.93
2644.17
2416.53
1133.79
690.7
156.18
Africa Americas Asia Europe Oceania World
Figure 5.1 Internet users: latest data available 2003
Source: ITU (2005).