[WSIS CS-Plenary] New FUNREDES publication on "paradigmatic divide"

[Daniel Pimienta]

Glad to share with you the last product of FUNREDES Think Tank gathering
years of field experiences and thinking:
"Digital Divide, Social Divide, Paradigmatic Divide"
Daniel Pimienta, FUNREDES, July 2007 (translated from Spanish)

ABSTRACT
The digital divide is nothing other than the 
reflection of the social divide in the digital 
world. The use of ICT for human development does 
offer opportunities to reduce the social divide 
for individual beings or communities; yet there 
exists a series of obstacles to overcome to make 
it possible for ICT use to bring the 
opportunities closer to these people and these 
groups of people. The very lack of existence of 
an infrastructure for connectivity is only the 
first obstacle, although it often receives an 
exclusive focus, due to the lack of an holistic 
approach. Offering an access to ICT does not 
necessarily imply that the people who benefit 
from the technologies can thus access 
opportunities for human development; education, 
more specifically a digital and information 
literacy, plays an essential part in the process. 
Telecommunication systems, computer hardware and 
software are predictable prerequisites; however, 
the true pillars of human-focused information 
societies (or societies of shared knowledge) are 
education, ethics, and participation, interacting 
together as a systemic process. As long as 
decision makers in the field of public policies 
or of ICT4D projects are not ready to consider 
these issues, and keep on favoring a mere 
technological vision, we will suffer from the 
most dangerous divide in terms of impact: the paradigmatic divide.

Keywords: ICT, ICT4D, Internet, digital divide, 
ownership, development, human development, information literacy

Any resemblance to characters, projects, or 
policies in real life IS quite intentional.
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Full text: 
http://funredes.org/mistica/english/cyberlibrary/thematic/Paradigmatic_Divide.pdf 
(over 10 MB)

Versión en español (original): 
http://funredes.org/mistica/castellano/ciberoteca/tematica/brecha_paradigmatica.pdf

Version en français (traduit de l'espagnol): 
http://funredes.org/mistica/francais/cyberotheque/thematique/fracture_paradigmatique.pdf