Social Responsibilities Discussion Group Paper

Amsterdam, 16 August 1998

The Electronic Information Gap

Alfred Kagan

Abstract

Most librarians view access to information as a public or social good, but transnational corporations view it as a commodity. However even librarians have started to write about library users as "customers" who should pay for some services. The provision of electronic information is sometimes described as a way for elite libraries in poor countries to leap-frog stages of library development in rich countries. Whether or not electronic information is seen as a public good or as a commodity will influence the development of library services. All trends show the growth in power of transnational corporations over more aspects of most of our lives regardless of what country we live in. We must examine our basic assumptions concerning the provision of electronic information in order to address the growing gap between the information rich and information poor both within and between countries.

The Librarianship of Poverty [1]

On July 10, 1997, at a seminar sponsored by the Panos Institute and the Pan African News Agency participants representing media, NGOs and educational institutions in 19 countries issued the Dakar Declaration on the Internet and the African Media. [2] The Declaration calls on African Governments to "instill an environment conducive to the rapid development of the Internet and other information and communication technologies," and that this development should be free of government interference. For our purposes the most important of the ten points declared include: creating a culture of online communications and ensuring African content on the Internet. The participants called upon the usual donors to fund projects to meet these objectives. This is only one of numerous examples that could be cited to show that people and institutions everywhere want access to electronic information and are working to realize their goals.

In this paper, most of the examples will come from the literature on United States and Africa because it is the material that the author knows best, however the patterns may be generally applied. Mchombu's work "On the Librarianship of Poverty" is a good starting point. Near the beginning of his article, we are given the following daunting information:

In the underdeveloped countries the common man is poor, illiterate and concerned with the basics of survival; more than four-fifths of his income is spent on food alone. He is hungry, undernourished, and diseases such as malaria, sleeping sickness, and cholera are his constant companions. Children suffer more than adults; kwashiorkor and parasitic diseases claim many of their lives before they reach the age of ten. Only abut 40% of the children complete primary school. [3]

Although this article was published in 1982, very little has changed concerning the general situation. (At least we are more conscious of gender issues than we were 16 years ago.) Indeed African librarians are still using words like "survival" in the titles of their works. [4] Saul F. C. Zulu noted the following barriers to using information technology in Africa: lack of access to adequate and reliable electricity; lack of environmental controls to maintain a good computer environment against dust, humidity, and heat; poorly developed telecommunications infrastructures; few qualified people to service and maintain equipment; a large illiterate or semi-literate population, lack of foreign exchange, language barriers, lack of national information policies, and lack of ability to upgrade obsolete equipment. [5] Although the African information technology situation has improved dramatically in the past few years, and there are new ways around some of these problems (solar energy, microwave and satellite technologies), enormous problems remain.

Of course, conditions are not the same for all citizens within any country, and this applies however rich or poor a country might be. The elite will have access to electronic resources not available to the large majority of people. In fact, to understand the contemporary world situation we must address the relation of various social classes to resources and power. We must also pay special attention to minority population groups. And we must address the role of transnational corporations in the control and provision of information.

The Racial Divide

A recent article in Science magazine compares Internet access for white and black people in the United States. [6] As we know, the distribution of wealth in the U. S. is extremely skewed, and continuing racism disadvantages African-Americans. In a poll conducted between December 1996 and January 1997, the authors found that significantly more whites owned home computers than blacks (44% vs. 29%). The contrast is even more dramatic when comparing high school and college students (73% vs. 32%)! Furthermore, whites were six times as likely as blacks to have used the Web during the past week. Controlling for income, the authors noted that in families with median income under $40,000, whites were twice as likely as blacks to own home computers. In that adjusting for income did not eliminate race differences, the article concludes that it is important to create access points for African-Americans in libraries, community centers and other nontraditional places. It is obvious that all countries, both rich and poor, face similar issues to a greater or lesser degree.

Information, the Media and Market Economy

The Cold War is over and corporate capitalism is triumphant. In his book on Information Inequality, Herbert Schiller describes the phenomenal growth of corporate power over the last fifty years which has resulted in "deregulation of economic activities, privatization of functions once public, and commercialization of activities once social." [7] Schiller devotes a full chapter to "The Policing of the Culture" [8] where he describes the subtle power of the "cultural industries" to regulate what people think and believe. He notes the increasing concentration of the media, the corporate takeover of formerly independent newspapers, and even the privatization of public education. He refers us to the following statement by Leslie Gelb, a former editor and columnist on the New York Times, former U.S. State Department official, and recently President of the influential Council on Foreign Relations. Gelb told a 1991 United Nations NGO conference that "the principal business of journalism consists of recording what people in power say," and that "The power of the media resides in its power to choose which ideas to present." Schiller goes on to note the same lack of diversity in the view put forward on U.S. television news shows as well as on radio and in films. Of course, this is not to say that divergent news sources do not exist, they are just much less prominent and have much less impact on the general population.

Librarians usually view information as a "public good," and it is obvious that access to information facilitates democratic decision-making and assists citizen participation in government. But Trevor Haywood, writing about the United Kingdom, notes how "Fewer and fewer policy makers believe that public investment in information services is worthwhile." [9] Information is now treated as a commodity to be bought and sold, and electronic format only makes this sale easier. Haywood warns that the current "delightful anarchy" of the Internet will soon be perceived as a threat to those who want to commoditize information. Schiller notes that all previous U.S. experience with communications technologies started with great promise but developed into instruments of profit-making. He cites radio, TV, cable, and satellite communications. [10] The Nation has been running a series of articles on the tightening control of a small number of transnational corporations of the various mass media. [11] As fewer and fewer corporations control more and more of the media, it becomes even harder to get divergent views aired. The great commercialization of the Internet in the past few years is just following this trend.

Globalization and the Internet

The flip-side of privatization, deregulation and commercialization in the rich countries is the World Bank's policy of Economic Structural Adjustment in the rest of the world. Haywood cites the "catastrophe" as follows: In order to receive aid, the recipient country would typically be required to privatize its economy, devalue its currency, remove all trade restrictions, cut all subsidies and severely reduce its spending on services such as health and education." [12] Furthermore, World Bank aid also comes with Eurocentric cultural strings attached. It is no wonder that the growth of Gross Domestic Product often widens the distribution of income gap! [13] U.S. President Clinton and Vice-President Gore are great promoters of the Internet. They have seen it as a means "to enable U.S. firms to compete and win in the global economy." [14] It is no accident that English is becoming the world language and also the language of the Internet. Note the following Presidential quote:

Most important of all, information has become global and has become king of the global economy. In earlier history, wealth was measured in land, in gold, in oil, in machines. Today, the principal measure of our wealth is information: its quality, its quantity, and the speed with which we acquire it and adapt to it…" [15]

The growing commercialization of the Internet is already old news. Even the New York Times, the U.S. "newspaper of record" reported on the "blur of boundaries between news and advertisements." [16] The article describes how advertisements are customized for Internet sites. For example, CNN's travel articles are directly linked to an online travel agency. And CNN sends Barnes and Noble booksellers a daily schedule of its top news stories so that news reports can be linked to book advertisements. We should not be surprised that the parent corporation of both CNN and Barnes and Noble is Time Warner Inc. This intense commercialization of news in a new phenomenon made possible by online technologies.

We all know that Microsoft Corporation dominates personal computing, with about 90% of operating systems as well as the most popular office software packages. There are jokes about Microsoft's desire to take over the world, but it is not funny that Microsoft already has quite a grip on operating systems and what we do on the Internet. In a recent survey, twelve computer manufacturers were asked if they would sell a PC without any operating system or with an alternative to Microsoft Windows. They all refused on both questions, with the exception that a very large purchase might be arranged. [17] Even IBM with its own OS2 operating system refused due to contract with Microsoft. Andrew Shapiro's article in The Nation should be recommended to every librarian. [18] He explains that Microsoft acts as a gatekeeper, and therefore does not need to restrict the Internet choices Users are "subtly but strongly" steered to Microsoft related Internet content and commerce through the icons and arrangement of the desktop. Of course, such practices are currently being challenged in the U.S. courts. Let us hope that something significant comes from this challenge.

Africa and the Internet

In 1995, there were 469 networks connected to the Internet from the countries of Africa. [19] Of these 419 were in South Africa. Compare this to the 28,470 networks reported for the United States. Dana Ott, in an article in First Monday, a "peer-reviewed journal on the Internet," wrote of the role of electronic media in promoting democracy in Africa. [20] She reported that the data are still unclear as to whether such a correlation exists, but she cites findings that there is a strong correlation with access to daily newspapers over the last 25 years. Such a possible correlation with electronic access might therefore be a reasonable assumption. Ott states that 44 of 54 African nations now have some form of Internet access, although only 6 have pervasive access outside their capital cities (Burkina Faso, Mauritius, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe). However she notes that such access might be either positive or negative, depending on the degree of equal access or the increase in disparity of access to information which will mirror economic and social inequalities. To paraphrase her argument, it is the class structure of society that will likely determine whether or not access to electronic information will promote democracy or tyranny in African countries. [21]

Conclusion

In order to understand the electronic information gap, one must first look to the context on the ground. The growing gap between the information rich and information poor both within countries and between countries is determined by the class structure and treatment of minority population groups within and between countries. While information technologies are spreading widely in rich countries, only the elite has access to such technologies in poor countries. Librarians can promote democracy by making such technologies available to a larger percentage of the population, especially through public libraries and educational institutions.

The dominance of the market economy means that inequality appears to be increasing in most countries of the world, with few exceptions. Globalization encourages the commercialization of the Internet. Giant transnational corporations are vying for control of access as well as content on the Internet. A great diversity of resources is currently available electronically, but it remains to be seen how much of it will continue to be available and free to all. Much information is already available only to those who can afford to pay for it. Content from poor countries is meager as a percent of the universe available. The question remains as to whether poor countries will be able to provide a significant amount of Internet content for a sizable fraction of their citizens. If poor countries are to electronically "leap-frog" over stages of library development, they will have to find the resources to also provide their own relevant information content.

The librarians' role must be to promote widespread citizen access to diverse sources of electronic information for free. We need to promote the production of local content in all countries, and to fight against the transnational corporations that are trying to decide for us how we will use the Internet as well as what we will find. In addition to our traditional librarians roles, we will need to become more politically active in our professional associations and within our societies in order to promote universal access to information.

References

This phrase is from K. J. Mchombu, "On the Librarianship of Poverty," Libri 32, 3 (1982): 241-250.
Dakar Declaration on the Internet and the African Media, Issued by the Seminar on "Internet, an Opportunity for Media and Democracy in Africa?," Dakar 7-10 July 1997, Dakar: Panos Institute and the Pan African News Agency, 1997, pamphlet. For a copy contact: panos@sonatel.senet.net.
Mchombu, p. 242.
For example, Saul F. C. Zulu, "Africa's Survival Plan for Meeting the Challenges of Information Technology in the 1990s and Beyond, Libri 44, 1 (March 1994): 77-94; and Helga Atkinson Patrikios and Lisbeth A. Levey, Survival Strategies in African University Libraries: New Technologies in the Service of Information, Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sub-Saharan Africa Program, 1994.
Zulu, p. 81-83. See Maria da Conceição Calmon Arruda's recent paper for a similar analysis of conditions in Latin America. "Libraries, New Technologies and Human Resources: the Challenge to the 21st Century." 1997 IFLA Paper, Copenhagen, 073-CONTR-3-E, booklet 0, table 5, p. 43.
Donna L. Hoffman and Thomas P. Novak, "Bridging the Racial Divide on the Internet," Science 280 (17 April 1998): 390-391.
Herbert I. Schiller, Information Inequality: the Deepening Social Crisis in America, New York and London: Routledge, 1996, p 55.
Schiller, chapter 1, p. 1-26.
Trevor Haywood, Info-Rich - Info-Poor: Access and Exchange in the Global Information Society. London: Bowker Saur, 1995, p. 84.
Schiller, p. 75.
The Nation 262 (June 3, 1996) for National Enternment State; 264 (March 17, 1997) for Crushing Power of Big Publishing; and 266 (June 8, 1998) for Television.
Haywood, p. 116.
Haywood, p. 253.
Schiller, p. 91.
Schiller, p. 103.
Saul Hansell, "News-Ad Issues Arise in New Media," New York Times, December 8, 1997, p. C10.
David Chun, "Exclusive Agreements with PC Manufacturers and Microsoft regarding Operating System Software," Info-Policy-Notes: News From Consumer Project on Technology, June 3, 1998, Electronic file, http://www.essential.org/listproc/info-policy-notes/.
Andrew L. Shapiro, "New Vocies in Cyberspace," The Nation 266, 21 (June 8, 1998): 36-38.
NSFNET Networks by Country, 1 May 1995, reported by Kanti Srikantaiah and Xiaoying Dong, "Internet and Its Impact on Developing Countries: Examples from China and India." 1997 IFLA Paper, Copenhagen, 087-CONTR-6-E, booklet 0, page 29.
Dana Ott, "Power to the People: the Role of Electronic Media in Promoting Democracy in Africa," First Monday, http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issues3_4/ott/index.html.
I just want to add a note on terminology here. Those of us who live in the U.S. often hear the phrase "democracy and market economy" when our officials talk of what U.S. foreign policy should promote in the rest of the world. In fact, we have come to hear this phrase as if it was one word. However, it is quite clear that these two concepts should be separated. For example, China is developing a market economy without democracy. In fact, surging corporate capitalism without strong social and political pressures will destroy whatever level of economic democracy/equality that may exist.

Latest Revision: September 9, 1998