A recent BBC World Service poll says that four in five people in the world view internet access as a “fundamental” right, with countries like Finland and Estonia having accorded it the status of a human right. Perhaps it is because they can afford to.
The construction of a statistic is never an easy task. The survey attempted to access as large a sample as possible, being extended to 27,000 people in 26 countries. However, it is also important to consider the kind of people who would have answered it. Those who realize the value of the internet are primarily those who have been exposed to it, or derived some benefit from it. These would be people from developed countries, or from the urban areas of developing countries. South Korea, the most digitalized country in the world, predictably had the highest number of responses claiming internet access to be of “fundamental” importance. Yet, there are those who still do exist at the periphery of the “knowledge society”. The inhabitants of the vast swathes of untamed land in Africa may be too generic and obvious an example. However, even a large proportion of the population in India – one of the countries directly targeted by the survey – would not be familiar with the merits of broadband.
It can be argued that human rights are not simplistic, that social rights constitute a separate tier. Ideally, technological development should occur alongside the development of roads, schools and water and sanitation facilities. Realistically, one needs to follow the other. Electricity cables need to precede their fibre optic counterparts; basic literacy is required to operate a Mac. A minimum level of income and the existence of an Apple franchise is needed to buy a Mac in the first place. To imply that 80 per cent of the world’s people are in a position to assert that internet access is an inalienable right, therefore, would be hugely misrepresentative.
This is not to say that people on the other side of the digital divide do not have the right to a better life. It would not do to belittle the wonders of the virtual world, where every aspect of life can be managed by a combination of clicks. The internet is not just a boundless reservoir of information. It is the embodiment of globalization, facilitating communication from emails to distance-learning. At the individual level, it makes research, travel, entertainment and shopping simpler than our parents could possibly have imagined. On a broader level, it plays Atlas to the world of business and finance, being the invisible infrastructure supporting international transactions.
No one should be denied admission to the knowledge society, through an invention that exponentially increases the conveniences of life. It is admirable that the EU is aiming to expand high-speed internet access to rural areas in spite of constraints. However, it would be misleading to say that nearly everyone in the world is aware of the advantages of the web, and places it just as high on the priority list. A single skewed statistic does not make ours a homogenous world.
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