The Digital Divide, Epistemology and Global Justice

1
The Digital Divide, Epistemology and Global
Justice

• Soraj Hongladarom
• Department of Philosophy
• Chulalongkorn University

2
Thesis statement

• Discussions of the normative aspects of the
  digital divide needs to pay attention to the fact
  that computer technology is a second-order
  device, thus making it necessary that cultures
  and epistemological considerations are involved.

3
The Digital Divide

• Many characterizations and dimensions of the
  digital divide
• Disparities between groups
• What kind of groups?
• How much different - continuum of differences
• What kind of problem is the digital divide?
• Many may choose to remain isolated
• Access to IT is a social good -what kind of good?
• How can we have deliberative polling if certain
  groups are underrepresented?

4
DD and Global Justice

• The DD does not just happen within a country one
  can certainly perceive a kind of DD among groups
  of countries - developed vs. developing/ First
  world vs. Third world, etc.
• This brings in issues in global justice
• Problem - what kind of authority is responsible?
• Are cultures involved, and if so how?

5
Normative Aspects

• The existence of the DD is a social ill that
  needs to be corrected.
• But the many dimensions of DD complicate the
  normative consideration.
• Moreover, the nature of IT in such a way that
  its second-order brings in epistemological
  considerations.

6
IT and older technologies

• One thing that distinguishes IT and older
  technologies such as the automobile or the
  toaster is that computers manipulate symbols,
  whereas the older ones manipulate concrete chunks
  of reality.
• Thus the use of IT is much connected with
  culture, since culture is often defined as the
  sum total of a group of humans symbolic symbolic
  and meaning-giving activities.

7
Role of Cultures

• Attempts to solve the global DD need to pay
  attention to cultures.
• Ways to solve the problem depend very much on
  cultures.
• Examples - what happened in Thailand a few years
  back.

8
What happened?

• In 1996, the Thai government distributed a large
  number of computers to schools nationwide, but it
  turned out that most of these were unused, or
  used not as effectively as was required to solve
  the problem.
• This seems to show that culture is a factor - for
  the Thai case - patriarchy, hierarchy at various
  levels
• What is particularly interesting is the role
  knowledge or attitudes toward knowledge play in
  all this.

9
Epistemology and epistemic culture

• In my 2002 paper, I argued that Alvin Goldmans
  truth-based social epistemology needs to be
  supplemented by considerations of the fact that
  many cultures, such as the Thai one, do not put
  the highest value on truth as epistemic goal -
  the philosophical lesson being that the
  epistemology that puts highest value on truth is
  based on a particular kind of culture.

10
IT and epistemology

• Traditional Thai epistemic culture - what passes
  for knowledge and truth is what is certified
  by the authority
• The motivation for providing the computers to
  schools is primarily epistemic. But that happened
  within the predominant traditional epistemic
  culture.
• What happened was that the computers were viewed
  more as a symbol of becoming modern rather than
  a tool for solving problems.

11
Practical implications

• Attempts to bridge the DD need to take into
  account the fact that the technology is permeated
  by culture. This is especially so in the case of
  the global DD, for there cultural differences are
  the most striking.
• The idea is neither to impose hardware and
  software on the people, nor to do nothing
  whatsoever.
• The idea is to let the villagers see the
  potentials of IT by themselves so that the
  technology fits their agenda.