The Expanding Universe of Egalitarianism

Recently, Yahoo! News alerted me to a UC Berkeley report relaying the dreaded fact that the much vaunted “digital democracy” yearned for by many a progressive has not yet come to pass. Bill Clinton’s hoped-for crossing of the digital divide has been a failure; or at least it has failed to rear its virtual head in the way he and other adherents to the expanding universe theory of egalitarianism would like it to.

The notion that unequal access to the internet is a tragedy of monumental importance has even (or should I say inevitably) been taken up by the United Nations, which has declared that exposure to this medium primarily concerned with purveying pixelized porn is a Human Right™. Yes, like food, shelter and all the other good things that constitute the bottom rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Let’s take a look:

Schradie, a researcher at the campus’s Berkeley Center for New Media, analyzed data from more than 41,000 American adults surveyed between 2000 and 2008 in the Pew Internet and American Life Project. She found that college graduates are 1.5 times more likely to be bloggers than are high school graduates; twice as likely to post  photos and videos and three times more likely to post an online rating or comment.

So, college graduates are 1.5 times more likely to be blogging – about their cat, dinner, or otherwise enriching the interwebs with a travel anecdote, no doubt. Not only that, but they’re more often than their less educated counterparts to be leaving their lonely voice stamp on an Amazon rating or Yelp review. The travesty of justice this represents is obvious, isn’t it? So, what will it take to rectify this situation?

“That chasm is unlikely to break down until everyone has a host of digital production tools at both home and work,” Schradie said.

Right, because from what we know from the possibly slightly more limited access the less fortunate have to the online village now, we can be certain that they’d be prowling Daily Kos, The Weekly Standard, or some other outlet for those for whom politics is sport, if only they had more of it. And what’s this about a host of digital production tools? What is the dream exactly, that everyone be a contributor to the creative process that gave us Kung Fu Panda 2? And why stop at home and work? Why not everywhere in between, ala the iDevices of every shape and size?

Apart from the limits that age seems to place on one’s tolerance for dealing with the internet’s idiosyncrasies, the online world is available to damned near everyone at this late date, and it’s increasingly obvious that people will fuss with it in as many ways as there are Facebook profiles. No two people engaging in a staring contest with their computer screen will be exactly alike. Now that’s diversity.

During my college days spent in the school library, centrally located and accessible to any nearly-sentient being in the vicinity capable of transport, I witnessed first hand the vast differences in one’s literal approach to the Internet. Though half or so visitors would use it for traditionally academic purposes – research, writing – most of the other half were biding their time with MySpace, YouTube and other low brow diversions. The remaining rabble availed themselves of such exciting yet practical virtual realms as that belonging to the Department of Motor Vehicles and Craigslist.

The concern over the digital divide seems to have grown from a mere concern with access to the lament that not enough people are “producing” content. Whether the world is further benefitted by introducing the “working class” – otherwise known as most people everywhere – to the wonders of self-shooting or MacGyver via Netflix on demand is disputable, but the mere act of bringing the disenfranchised into the fold is no guarantee that the progressive gods will be satisfied, as the internal contradictions of the hierarchy of the oppressed reveal.

Even if the underclass obtains the means, they won’t necessarily use it for production, or at least not the kind of production that is considered valuable to a thriving civic culture.

And why should they? The educated and politically active have a tendency to project their own habits and fascinations onto the unwashed masses, who seem to resist with an indomitable will the former’s desire to dragoon them into democratic engagement they by all accounts find utterly boor-ing, unless it involves a Weiner. Social media sites have been democratized, but nobody cares about big D democracy (more likely just plain old “big Ds”).

Yes, the concern with equal access has long been relegated to the cultural artifacts the upper class itself prizes and busies itself with, from organic and locally grown food to “digital production tools.” This obsession with equality knows no bounds, and it would seem the only thing unable to expand as fast is the number of domain names available in this hotbed of segregation known as the internet.

Mupetblast writes at Entitled to an Opinion.