Digital Divide

Computer use (equated with Internet Use) is strongly correlated to a nation's wealth measured in GDP per capita and energy consumption per capita. Developing nations have limited computer use, because their populations do not have enough wealth to invest in computers. This is a double-bladed sword.

Nations with large numbers of affluent consumers can and do invest in computer use. Computers are immensely valuable tools of commerce and learning. Thus, Computer use and industry have concentrated, reinforcing, benefits in developed nations and affluent communities.

While the computer industry powers the acceleration of the developed world, it also deepens the inequities between society’s haves and have-nots. There are 105 nations in which less than one in ten people have internet access. In thirty of these nations, less than one in a hundred people have internet access. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, eight out of ten-thousand people have internet access.