Whilst many authors are now confident to dismiss the notion of the digital divide, this paper argues that inequalities in ICT use in contemporary higher education are of growing rather than diminishing importance. In particular, it argues that there is an urgent need for the higher education community to develop more sophisticated understandings of the nature of the digital divisions that exist...

If we study available evidence, the digital divide is closing rapidly. During the last decade, millions of people have gained access to computers every year. Never in the human history there have been so many people with access to computers, digital networks, and electronic communication technologies. Census Bureau's Current Population Surveys indicate that telephone penetration has stabilized ...

The main aim of this paper is to examine the impact of the establishment of telecentres, particularly KedaiKom on community building in Malaysia. KedaiKom is one of the projects undertaken by the Malaysian government to reduce the digital divide among the population. The impact of KedaiKom on community building was viewed from two perspectives: capacity of getting ahead and social and digital i...

Increased access and more affordable connectivity to advanced ICTs and especially wireless and Internet services enhances the ability of development professionals and an increasingly diverse range of citizens of developing countries to access the world’s storehouse of information – the Internet. Proper management of the knowledge networks is required to ensure that the Internet will be a tool t...

The powerful role of information and communication technology (ICT) in social and economic development has led many to ponder the consequences of unequal access to it. In the mid-1990s, journalists, scholars, and political leaders started discussing the significance of what they termed a digital divide between the information haves and have-nots. In this chapter, I review the issue of a digital...

As its point of departure, this paper takes the view that if the digital divide between rich and poor countries is to be diminished on any significant scale, a wide range of complementary low-cost versions of information technologies will be needed. Since the available knowledge about these technologies is highly fragmented and difficult to access, however, we seek in this paper to provide poli...

Data on Internet performance and the analysis of its trend can be useful for decision makers and scientists alike. Such performance measurements are possible using the PingER methodology. We use the data thus obtained to quantify the difference in performance between developed and developing countries, sometimes referred to as the “digital divide.” Motivated by the recent interest of G8 countri...