The Digital Divide in Europe. The Economic and Social Issues Related to "Knowledge-based Europe"

The 1990s saw the arrival of a new era for most industrialized countries. The rise of new information and communications technologies meant the start of a period of very rapid changes that completely transformed the daily life of ordinary people. But while these developments brought with them actual progress and hopes of further advances in many fields (e.g. communications, medicine, education), they also had the effect of leaving some people behind. As Patrick Cohendet and Lucy Stojak argue here, the knowledge-based society has indeed marginalized some groups in Europe, and this “digital divide” (here measured mainly in terms of use of the Internet) could well become more serious if nothing is done to improve matters. The authors begin by defining what is meant by “digital divide”, distinguishing technological (basically quantitative) considerations from a socio-economic approach (taking account of qualitative aspects, such as the ability to use technologies, as well as quantitative ones), which is the one they prefer. They then present a typology of users (and non-users) of the Internet, showing the inequalities linked to social class, geography, age, etc. As the authors emphasize, it is essential to narrow this divide if the European Union in future is to achieve its aim of becoming “the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world”; this must be done in order to prevent a widening of the gap between the older and newer members of the EU, and more generally between densely populated regions and isolated areas; and it is an important consideration given an ageing population, as older people tend to be less computer-literate. Moreover, it is all too clear that simply having the infrastructures for access to the mass of information available via the Internet is not enough; people must also be able to sort out this information, then understand and assimilate it. In other words, for a truly knowledge-based society to develop there needs to be a genuine effort to educate the public. Lastly, the article proposes a series of policy measures geared to narrowing the divide, starting by installing the necessary digital infrastructures across the whole of Europe and providing universal broadband access to the Internet, just like access to the telephone in the past.