The digital advance.

• Author: Hamelink, Cees J.
• Position: Digital Information-Communication Technologies

More than half the world's people have never made a phone call. Will ICTs assure us change?

Digital Information-Communication Technologies (ICTs) promise the world a "new civilization", an "information revolution", or a "knowledge society". Once ICTs have realized worldwide access for all to information, new social values will evolve, new social relations will develop, the "zero sum society" comes to a definite end. According to the digital utopists, ICTs will create more productivity and improved chances for employment. They will upgrade the quality of work in many occupations and offer myriad opportunities for small-scale, independent and decentralized forms of production. Poor countries that are still in the agricultural age can now leap-frog into a post-industrial society, bypassing all the trouble of the industrial revolution.

The utopists also predict that ICTs will strongly reinforce current processes of democratization in many countries. The increased access to information flows will undermine official censorship and empower movements in civil society. And they disagree with those who worry about scenarios of worldwide cultural homogenization; they see the emergence of new and creative lifestyles, vastly extended opportunities for different cultures to meet and understand each other.

They foresee the creation of new virtual communities that easily cross all the traditional borderlines of age, gender, race and religion. And it is obviously true that ICTs can perform tasks that are indeed essential to democratic and sustainable social development. They can provide low-cost, high-speed, worldwide interactive communications among large numbers of people, unprecedented access to information sources, alternative channels for information provision that counter the commercial news channels, and can support networking, lobbying and mobilizing.

Educational facilities can be improved, using ICTs to facilitate distance learning and on-line library access. Electronic networking has also been used in the improvement of the quality of health services, since ICTs permit remote access to the best diagnostic and healing practices and, in the process, cut costs. Digital technologies for remote sensing can provide early warning to sites vulnerable to seismic disturbances and can identify suitable land for crop cultivation. In addition, computer technology can assist in the development of flexible, decentralized, small-scale industrial production, thus...