The imbalance between the promise and reality of globalization is perhaps nowhere more striking than in the unequal distribution, among nations and classes, of digital resources - hardware, software, communications bandwith. For example, South Asia, which accounts for 23 per cent of the world's population, has less than 1 per cent of the world's Internet users. Africa has seven Internet connections for every 1 million people. While Internet access requires a working telephone line, 40 per cent of people living in developing countries do not have access to a telephone line. In Bangladesh, there are fewer than three telephone lines for every 1,000 people. In Afghanistan, the ratio is less than one in 1,000.
In contrast, nearly half the global on-line population resides in the United States. Forty per cent of Americans have Internet access at home or at work. The level of Internet usage in Germany and the United Kingdom is still about 20 per cent but is increasing rapidly. United States companies have been quickest to exploit the potential of the Internet for business. Many of the largest are United States-based. By one estimate, United States corporations collect 85 per cent of the revenues from the Internet business and represent 95 per cent of the stock market value of Internet companies.
The imbalance in the infrastructure and access to the Internet is significant for several reasons. First, there is a close interrelationship between information technology and the skilled labour that is the primary beneficiary of trends towards a modern, global, knowledge-based economy. Second, the new information and communications technologies form an integral part of the "new" economy. Third, and perhaps most importantly, there are strong productivity gains attached to the use of information technologies and the progressive networking that has accompanied it. Spin-offs from investments in the sector have been a key factor in the recent high employment, low inflation growth of the United States economy. It has dramatically increased the speed and changed the nature of doing business, including through the emergence of electronic commerce. But as a result of better monitoring of production and distribution cycles and more efficient inventory and cost-control techniques, among other things, productivity returns are also evident in traditional industries, such as transportation and construction. Finally, the applications of information technology in the sphere of education, health and information are perhaps the best expression of its positive potential for social development.
New technologies that have been such a factor in globalization have opened up opportunities for men and women across the world, including in developing countries, with skills in the new economy (for example software technicians and transcription services), which were previously limited by physical factors. But while information technologies do offer developing countries prospects of leap-frogging some developmental steps, its potential to stimulate the domestic economy and to act as a catalyst for integrating developing countries into the international trading system on a fair and equitable basis is still largely dependent on education and economic development. Even if telecommunications systems are installed and accessible, without literacy and basic computer skills people will have little access to the network society. Unless basic education, computer literacy and basic developmental issues are telescoped and tackled simultaneously, the knowledge gap between and within countries will widen. Moreover, if information technology is to play its full productive role, developing countries need to go beyond providing information services for export and apply it widely in their own economies also so that the spin-offs in terms of efficiencies, productivity and electronic commerce can be felt domestically as well.
There is also a danger that as those in developing countries with the skills for the new economy get increasingly networked, the gap between the skilled and the unskilled is likely to get wider. The information-rich will get richer and information-poor will get even poorer. Given the productivity benefits of the new technologies, failure to bridge the gap is likely to open up a chasm between those countries and sections that are able to plug into this process and those that are not. The challenge is not only to exploit the opportunities offered by information technology to improve the capacity of developing countries in the world economy but also to integrate the sector that is relatively better integrated with the sector that is not. This is true for every society but especially for developing countries.
The economic benefits of the new technologies are undeniable. But apart from aggravating the gap between the skilled and the unskilled and reinforcing inequality in the short run, the new information society poses some challenges for social development. The Internet offers the possibility of greater democratization of information and business by bringing users in direct contact across Internet space. A number of recent campaigns also reveal its utility in mobilizing public opinion around topical public issues. But if its potential for social development is to be fully realized, it is essential that its character as a public space be preserved. Like most technologies, information technology can also be used to privatize public space, making it accessible to some but not to others. Alternatively, it can be used to widen access across social and organizational barriers.
A second concern, together with other developments, is the impact on social cohesion. The evolution of a consumer society in which almost anything can be acquired in the market, a labour market characterized by insecurity and the scope that the Internet offers to alter the nature of human contact in the conduct of social and economic relations may well impact on the cohesion of societies.