The Digital Divide

During the history of rapid technological advancement humankind has manifested its inherent aspiration to progress forward in science and technology but to show little appreciation of already available achievements . Indeed , there seems to be a stable interest for what can yet be done in the future but when those projects get materialized we already have something new to dream about and pay only very temporal attention to what has been almost a kind of science fiction some ten years ago . I believe that history of development of Internet technology has been a

very indicative example of such an attitude . In the past not so distant there was a great excitement over the looming idea of ubiquitous penetration of Internet into our lives and emergence of a kind of a global informational environment (Norris , Bennett Entman 2001 ,

. 6 . Now that this expectation is almost completely fulfilled we again begin to view Internet as just another usual convenience of our civilization

However , in contrast to some secondary technological developments Internet-related technologies have produced a truly dramatic and profound effect on many spheres of our life . Some fields of human activity are greatly boosted by Internet but some are feared to be endangered by `always-on-line` status that more and more of us take on even thought often unwittingly . In this light , let us consider implications that Internet technology has in our lives and in business

One of the most essential distinctive features of Internet as a communication system is its seemingly non-local nature where there is no principal difference in representation of information requested by web surfer from source located in the adjacent room or from another part of the planet (Slevin , 2000 ,

. 39 . In this regard it is only fitting that Internet appeared in the world where tendencies of globalization serve as one of the most evident causes of global changes . Thus , Internet while owing to demands of globalization to a large degree for its origin , has itself become the powerful tool to further promote it . It is no wonder then that business and science were among the first active users of Internet technologies for purposes of adequate informational support of global activities (Castells , 2001 ,

. 74 . But soon Internet overgrew specific areas of application and spread into wide public usage

And as it often happens with many helpful tools , rather quickly what was initially just a means became a crucial condition that defined the very notion of successful communication (Schiller , 1996 ,

. 105 . Take for example e-mail - this may be the most widespread and unique means of communicating and developing relationships since the invention of telephone . First of all , it can be used easily because of readily available access to Internet secondly , it has become the most common - and arguably the most effective - means of communication . People also may like e-mail because in many respects it is similar to traditional handwritten letters sans the need to address letters , to stick stamps and to find time to bring a letter...