Information Poverty.

The internet has become a critical, and global tool for modernization through out the past few decades. However, due to the Internet's impact in accessibility regarding things such as: mass communication, access to information, and economic advantages (in terms of "cheap and efficient service") it provides for businesses [1], the gap between the more modernized (or core) countries in the world, and the peripheral societies, has grown tremendously. The chasm between developed and under developed societies is at times much greater than one might assume, the article "Information Poverty and the Wired World" by Pipa Norris states that two-thirds of the people who have access to the internet are from the U.S, the U.K, Germany, Canada and Japan.[2] Ironically, those five countries are among the world's richest. Nonetheless, the so-called "digital divide" (Norris 4), doesn't only impede societal advancement over seas, it also affects groups of people who live in core, rich countries. In the United States for example, the effects of the same kind of divide, is evident in lower income households, certain ethnic groups, and people that live in rural areas among others. The lack of access to internet, and all the information it provides, promotes what is known as information poverty. Overall, it is a condition that affects the technologically deprived people of a developing or even a modernized society, that further produces underdevelopment and inequality among groups of people. The fact of the matter is that access to information in this day in age, is becoming a necessity. Therefore allowing information poverty to continue on, keeps some societies moving forward into the millennium, and figuratively leaves others behind in the in the 20th century.

[1] [2] Norris, Pippa. “Information Poverty and the Wired World”. The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. 5 (2000): 1-6. Print.