guardian.co.uk,
Mark Graham, 9 January 2012
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| Children in an internet shop in Jakarta. The distribution of online knowledge is heavily weighted towards the global north. Photograph: Romeo Gacad/ AFP / Getty Images |
Digital
information – photographs, blogs, videos, tweets, Wikipedia articles, reviews,
descriptions, stories, and myriad other types of content – surrounds us. The
amount of (mostly unpaid) human labour behind this content is astonishing.
Wikipedia alone is the result of over 100m hours of work.
These
online layers of content matter not just because they are an increasingly
important way in which we access and produce information, but also because they
materially shape how we move through, understand, and enact our physical
environments.
Traditionally,
information and knowledge about the world have been geographically constrained.
The transmission of information required either the movement of people or the
availability of some other medium of communication. Historical maps offer
perhaps the best illustration of the geographic limitations to knowledge
transmission. Take the 13th-century Carta Pisana, the world's oldest surviving
navigational chart. Produced in Italy, the chart depicts relatively accurate
information about the Mediterranean, less accurate information about the
fringes of Europe, but no information at all about the world beyond Europe.
Up until
the late 20th century, almost all mediums of information – books, newspapers,
academic journals, patents and the like – were characterised by similar huge geographic inequalities (pdf). The global north produced, consumed and
controlled much of the world's codified knowledge, while the global south was
largely left out.
In the
internet era, however, the movement of information is no longer constrained by
distance. Very few parts of the world remain disconnected from the grid, and
over 2 billion people are now online (most of them in the south). IBM,
recognising this fact, has recently proclaimed the "digital divide will
cease to exist" in the next five years.
Unsurprisingly,
many believe we now have the potential to access what Wikipedia's founder
refers to as "the sum of all human knowledge". Theoretically, parts
of the world traditionally left out of flows and representations of knowledge
can quite literally be put back on the map.
However,
potential has too often been confused with actual practice. Profound digital
divisions of labour are evident in all open platforms that rely on
user-generated content.
On Flickr,
countries in the north are covered by much thicker clouds of information. Google's
databases contain more indexed user-generated content about the Tokyo
metropolitan region than the entire continent of Africa. While on Wikipedia,
there is more written about Germany than South America and Africa combined. In
other words, there are massive inequalities that cannot simply be explained by
uneven internet penetration rates. A range of other physical, social, political
and economic barriers reinforce the digital divide, amplifying the
informational power of the already powerful and visible.
That's not
to say the internet doesn't have important implications for the developing
world. People use it not just to connect with friends and family, but to learn,
share information, trade, and represent their communities.
Consequently,
it's important to be aware of the internet's highly uneven geographies of
information. These inequalities matter to the south, because connectivity –
though a clear prerequisite for access to most 21st-century platforms of
knowledge sharing – is by no means a determinant of knowledge production and
digital participation.
How do we
move towards encouraging participation from and about parts of the world left
out of virtual representations? The first step is allowing people to see what
is, and isn't, represented. After that, there is also a clear need for plans
like Kenya's strategy to boost local digital content, or Wikimedia's Arabic Catalyst project, which aims to encourage the creation of content in Arabic and
provide information about the Middle East.
It remains
to be seen how effective such strategies will be in changing the highly uneven
digital division of labour. As we rely increasingly on user-generated
platforms, there is a real possibility that we will see the widening of divides
between digital cores and peripheries. It is crucial to keep asking where
visibility, voice and power reside in an increasingly networked world.
Related Article:
The Internet - The first Worldwide Tool of Unification ("The End of History")
" ... Now I give you something that few think about: What do you think the Internet is all about, historically? Citizens of all the countries on Earth can talk to one another without electronic borders. The young people of those nations can all see each other, talk to each other, and express opinions. No matter what the country does to suppress it, they're doing it anyway. They are putting together a network of consciousness, of oneness, a multicultural consciousness. It's here to stay. It's part of the new energy. The young people know it and are leading the way.... "
" ... I gave you a prophecy more than 10 years ago. I told you there would come a day when everyone could talk to everyone and, therefore, there could be no conspiracy. For conspiracy depends on separation and secrecy - something hiding in the dark that only a few know about. Seen the news lately? What is happening? Could it be that there is a new paradigm happening that seems to go against history?... " Read More …. "The End of History"- Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)
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