Is innovation fair?

Is innovation fair? Has the Internet revolution resulted in more social justice and equality for everyone in society?

Not according to Helen Milner, the managing director of UK Online Centres, an organization that works with both the public and private sectors to bring technology to everyone in the UK. On Tuesday evening, I had the great privilege to attend an invitation-only Channel 4 sponsored debate entitled Recasting The Net chaired by Charlie Beckett director of LSE’s Polis institute, which featured Milner, Channel 4's open-source idealist Tom Loosemore and the surprisingly wired editor of the ancient Spectator news weekly, Matthew d'Ancona.

The real subject of last week’s debate was social justice on the Internet and it was Milner who, for better or worse, stole the Channel 4/Polis show. She spoke impassionedly on behalf of the 25% of people in the UK who, she claimed, have neither access to the Internet nor knowledge of how to use digital technology. This 21st century unwired class, Milner suggested, was the new lumpenproletariat cast adrift in an increasingly online centric world of cheap and convenient Internet services and goods.

Milner is certainly right in some ways. The old digital divide is now a chasm. The 25% of people in the UK who have no access to the Internet are, indeed, profoundly unequal with the rest of us – the 75% who have the good fortune or wisdom to know our way around the Internet. As Web 2.0 morphs into the raging real-time stream of services like Twitter, those poor souls who don’t even know how to send emails are, like their mid 19th century handworker ancestors, doomed to analogue oblivion. Luddism is for losers. Aside from the super rich who can afford their own Internet butlers, technological ignorance is the symbol of failure, the red cross of shame, in our Darwinian digital “democracy”.

But what should be done? The unfortunate truth is that innovation isn’t fair. Nor is the Internet, especially today’s real-time web. Rather than creating more equality, it has actually generated massive accumulations of power amongst a tiny new elite of attention-economy aristocrats like Silicon Valley new media baron Tim O’Reilly who has more than 500,000 loyal Twitter followers. For all the promises of democratization, real-time landed gentry like O’Reilly and increasingly monopolistic technology companies like Google and Amazon might actually be reinventing the radically unequal hierarchies of mid 19th century capitalism in the new digital age.  

The problem with Milner’s argument is that she has a 20 century welfare-state style solution to a 21st century problem. At the Channel 4 debate last week, she suggested that we all somehow have a moral duty to help the unwired 25%. But is this really true? Without wishing to sound too self-helpish, how much should we do to drag the uninitiated into the network? Especially since the raison-d’etre of the Internet is rooted in individual innovation and initiative.

So my advice to the 25% of you out there who don’t have access to the Internet is pretty simple (not of course that you'll read this electronic message). Rather than relying on 20th century do-gooders like Helen Milner, you need to beg, steal or borrow to get yourself wired in the 21st century. Computers today often cost less than televisions and broadband access is about the same price as cable. Many of today’s mobile telephones are mini computers. There are now many libraries, schools, cafés, community centres and even churches with online computers. The digital future is yours. But only the networked will survive.

Comments

[Paul Seaman]

Helen Milner was speaking nonsense. World internet penetration stands at 23.8 %, which means 76.2% of six billion people are not connected. The good news is that there is no connection whatsoever between social justice and the Internet. That would be true if 100% had access or if nobody did. Nevertheless, I am an advocate of the internet and the benefits it brings to society. I love telephones, too, but nobody seriously argues that their use and social justice are directly linked.

We should not confuse the spread of democracy, freedom, and the increased wealth globalization brings with either how people choose to spend their money or with how they are able to spend it. Freedom and justice are not dependent on whether people have an inside toilet or a broadband link. Though, of course, quality of life (which is to be celebrated) can be boosted by possession of both. More of this on my PR blog: www.paulseaman.eu

[Paul Seaman]

Moreover, Helen Milner should be told that the British National Party is currently the number one political hit on the web in the UK. The British National Party (BNP) is thrashing the mainstream parties - but only online. This says as much about the internet as it does about politics. More here:

http://paulseaman.eu/2009/03/the-web-suits-the-bnp-better-than-the-mainstream/

[Mike Whatley]

Ms Millner no doubt means well. This digital "White man's burden" alarms some. I wish we'd had blogs in 1995. I recall telling a friend that I believed the internet would become the province of the educated elites. (Of course you can only take my word for it now!). That is to say, the proletariat will use the net (if they use it at all) for entertainment and utility communications. But the arena of Web 2.0, professional collaboration sites, all networked project teams, elearning, etc. will be the domain of the educated classes. With all due respect to Nicholas Negroponte and his efforts....it is indeed Darwinian. As it should be.

Cheers Andrew!!

[mariana]

That's the famous issue of the digital divide, it happen before with every new technology, the ones that are left out become seriously impaired in society

[master shredder]

" But the arena of Web 2.0, professional collaboration sites, all networked project teams, elearning, etc. will be the domain of the educated classes."

that's because the uneducated classes are too busy working hard and paying attention to the real world to bother with such a pointless and mastubatory waste of time as web 2.0. as usual the educated classes are disappearing up their own asshole, so convinced and certain that what they are doing and saying matters to anyone else other than similar twittwats.

as my friend said, "it turns out i don't need people to hold my hand or jerk me off to inspire me to imagine, begin and complete serious personal projects in which i improve my skills and knowledge".

[MLDina]

The online community is important, but not a necessity- at least for the time being. There are a lot of free ways to get access to the latest technology. While it might be a hassle, I'm sure that if given a choice, almost everyone would choose basic necessities like food and water over Internet- much harder to come by and in limited supply.

[Joe Nutt]

Given the increasingly aging population, I wonder what proportion of Ms Milner's 25% are simply over 65 and quite content, nay even delighted, to be digitally disenfranchised?

[Cory Frye]

In this ongoing technological kerfuffle (join us, children, on the Road to Synchronous Enlightenment!), one thing is conveniently forgotten: No matter how technologically advanced we become, we're still human beings. Fallible, jealous, devious, flawed. We WILL f**k it up, guaranteed.

[Oakley Goggles]

I think that the use of technology and internet has got better with time and that we should give some time and try to create positive environment for the rest of 25% people to get them connected and be aware of the benefits of technology and computers.

[paul meyers]

I was just told that "Web2.0" was just declared the one millionth word in the english language. Now I have trouble even considering it to be a word. thought of you and your book when I heard this. How about another book, are you working on anything?

[PUA]

"We should not confuse the spread of democracy, freedom, and the increased wealth globalization brings with either how people choose to spend their money or with how they are able to spend it."

I disagree, the increased wealth is bringing inter connectivity and communication that is pushing the free exchange of ideas. There are drawbacks as well but the communication revolution is making a monumental impact on how societies will operate from now into the future.

[roulette system]

It's just a question of time before that 25% of those non techie people will use the net. Whether it's on their own computer or their friends computer. Not to mention the wireless capabilities via these smart phones. Smartphones are just mini computers so the accessibility to the "net" is too easy not to use it.

Roulette System

[Buy Dissertation Online]

Blogs are so interactive where we get lots of informative on any topics nice job keep it up !!

[SlideSF]

Mark, please take note of the date on your last blog entry. Obviously you are blogging less and twittering more. Are you doing this because Twitter is more a more effective tool for communicating your ideas? Or is it just easier?

[jo]

you're a class act Andrew Keen, i just pirate your book and i must say it is quite well read

[Muzorewa]

Once again, another article riddled with hyperbole and condescension. For a start, it surely is simply a matter of time before the other 25% become "wired". 3 years ago the same question could have been asked but with 40% having replaced 25%. Secondly, being "wired" isn't the be all and end all. Something approaching 25% of the population are over 60 years old and are a) not likely to be tech-savvy, b) probably not interested since they've got by their entire lives relatively tech-free (technology in our sense of the word) and are just as happy to go on living that way. Secondly, there are still plenty of professional and non-professional lives that do not require any association with the internet whatsoever. Yes this will probably change over the years as well.

"Luddism is for losers". Gives the impression Keen is trying to get in with the cool kids at school. Simply being connected to internet in some meaningful form doesn't guarantee a better quality of life. And in my opinion, there is nothing more virtuous than being able to dislocate oneself entirely from the travails of the web.

I appreciated some of the ideas in the book but I'm losing faith with every article.

[Prokofy Neva]

Andrew, I never know with you whether you are merely just reporting on the inequities of things like O'Reilly as Twitter landed gentry and Google as 19th century-style monopolist or...celebrating them.

And it's one thing to contemplate the UK as having as many as 25 percent not "wired". But then when you think Russia has more than 50 percent not only not wired, but never having any intention or even hope of getting a computer or Internet service...and then when you start thinking of Africa and Asia...you start to see this "unwired" divide as something that might produce massive fascist-style movements that do something like turn off the electricity for the Unelected Wired. The elite is only one old-fashioned East Coast blackout or one old-fashioned West Coast earthquake away from being completely irrelevant.

But, you say, if these people aren't on the Internet, how can they organize? How can they connect? And the answer is: mobile phones. Mobile phones as you must know are growing far, far more rapidly in many places of the world, even in poorest Africa, at astonishingly fast rates. Skipping over the lack of broadband. So people will have plenty of ways to get connected outside the Unelected Wired elite but in ways that will be far away from the texts, the persuasive long arguments, etc. of the Internet. They may simply skip Twitter and talk in voice. We don't know how it will turn out. Your twitter followers may not save you.

[Oakley Ski Goggles]

Good article. keep up the work