Does the "digital divide" exist ?
Résumé
This text begins with a criticism of discourses about the notion of ‘digital divide'. Regardless of the identity of their authors (politicians, G8 ‘experts', activists), these speeches are mostly based on technical determinism and on a confusion between information and its support. This paper studies the quality and the functions of the measures of the supposed ‘digital divide', that serve above all to legitimize a posteriori this notion of divide, whilst expressing prejudices about nations and societies, mostly on the basis of one indicator : the ratio of Internet users of each country. Potentialities of digital writing are outlined, as well as the knowledge needed to profit from them. This knowledge is unsurprisingly linked to traditional kinds of capital (economical, social, and intellectual). Hence, few people can benefit from data processing. Finally, behing the ‘digital divide' and the solution proposed to bridge it (investing in equipment), one discovers a very deep cognitive segregation related to the diffusion of the digital systems of writing. Then shows that the internet is merely a revelator of the rifts of our societies, the most critical one being the cognitive divide.
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