Enhancing Digital Equity: Connecting the Digital Underclass

Digital technologies have the potential to reduce social disparities, tackle social exclusion, enhance social and civil rights, and promote equity, but they must be promoted to connect the digital underclass and avoid creating the digital oligarchy. Algorithms have normalized inequalities in the name of efficiency and rationalization, penalizing specific social categories.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 114 pages
Publication date: 09 August 2021
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Digital technologies have the potential to significantly reduce social disparities, tackle social exclusion, enhance social and civil rights, and promote equity. To achieve this, it is essential to promote digital equity and connect the digital underclass. The book highlights how the advent of technologies can become a barrier to social mobility, leading to the formation of the digital oligarchy, which further penalizes the digital underclass. Socially disadvantaged individuals, living at the margins of digital society, face penalization in accessing, using, and benefiting from digital technologies (three levels of digital divide). Additionally, they face challenges in understanding, programming, and treating new digital technologies (three levels of algorithms divide). The introduction and implementation of tools that rely on algorithms to make decisions have further normalized inequalities, perpetuating social categories and exacerbating existing disparities.

Digital technologies have the potential to significantly reduce social disparities, tackle social exclusion, enhance social and civil rights, and promote equity. To achieve this, it is essential to promote digital equity and connect the digital underclass. The book highlights how the advent of technologies can become a barrier to social mobility, leading to the formation of the digital oligarchy, which further penalizes the digital underclass. Socially disadvantaged individuals, living at the margins of digital society, face penalization in accessing, using, and benefiting from digital technologies (three levels of digital divide). Additionally, they face challenges in understanding, programming, and treating new digital technologies (three levels of algorithms divide). The introduction and implementation of tools that rely on algorithms to make decisions have further normalized inequalities, perpetuating social categories and exacerbating existing disparities.

Weight: 173g
Dimension: 210 x 148 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783030490812
Edition number: 1st ed. 2020