Historical Background

James B. Pick () and Avijit Sarkar ()
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James B. Pick: University of Redlands
Avijit Sarkar: University of Redlands

Chapter Chapter 2 in The Global Digital Divides, 2015, pp 31-56 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The digital divide was present at the beginning of commercial computing, has continued through stages of technological advance and societal changes, and remains present today, even though at all levels information technology are more capable and pervasive. The stages of maturation of technologies are discussed. An analysis is done of a sample of nations indicating that innovations take place regularly and start up at different times depending on a country’s readiness to utilize an innovation. Although some developing nations have appeared extremely far behind at times, leapfrogging has allowed some of them to rapidly move from being tech-deficient to moderate or even advanced world ICT levels. At a given time point in this history, there are differences between nations that can be measured, and for three key technologies the variation of differences are reducing. However, even today, the variation is high for broadband and PCs but less so for mobile phones. To demonstrate the stages of history of the digital divide, the cases of Azerbaijan and South Korea are discussed, and they show that particular country features and social-political environments can influence rapid ICT growth as well as obstacles.

Keywords: Mobile Phone; Cell Phone; Digital Divide; Mobile Broadband; Advanced Nation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:prochp:978-3-662-46602-5_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-46602-5_2

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