Chapter 18 The Digital Divide (P. Norris)

If the last chapter is about information per se, this chapter is more about information on the Internet or information technology, and the relationship between the Internet and the digital divide. Among the three kinds of divide - the global divide, the social divide, and the democratic divide, the emphasis is clearly on the last one. For the first two divides, Norris is more concerned with describing the potential problems/porspects and the different views of these problems/porspects from cyber-optimists, cyber-skeptics, and cyber-pessimists (which, by the way, is a pretty useful classification). He does raise many interesting questions. For example, after talking about social divide, he asks whether there are 'special barriers' in using the Internet compared to the old mass media, given there is no absolute social inequialities.

While he raises questions instead of putting forward arguments and giving evidence to the first two divides, he does analyze and argue about the application of the Internet in the democratic divide. This is a middle ground between change everything and change nothing: "digital technologies have the capacities to strengthen the institutions of civic society mediating between citizens and the state, especially the power of insurgents"(p.280). In Lessig's word, we can make a choice about the code...