Knowledge divide

Introduction

In the 21st century, the emergence of the knowledge society becomes pervasive(UNESCO, 2005). The transformations of world’s economy and of each society have a fast pace. Together with information and communication technologies (ICT) these new paradigms have the power to reshape the global economy (Information Society Commission, 2002). In order to keep pace with innovations, to come up with new ideas, people need to produce and manage knowledge. This is why knowledge has become essential for all societies.

Knowledge divide is related with digital divide

The information and ICT systems that support knowledge are very important. This is why digitization is viewed closely related to knowledge. If scientists agree that there is a digital divide, recently different reports showed the existence of knowledge divide (Information Society Commission, 2002; UNESCO, 2005).

On the one hand, the existence of knowledge is more and more related with the development of an ICT infrastructure. Without ICT, it is impossible to have an infrastructure able to process automatically the huge flow of information that is required in an advanced economy. In particular, without an adequate technical support, e-learning and electronic documents are impossible to be developed, in order to overcome time and space constraints.

One the other hand, knowledge is distinct from ICT and its physical support of information. According to the UNESCO's report from 2005, knowledge is related also with many other aspects outside ICT world such as:
* Freedom
* Democracy
* Plurality of information
* The infrastructure of economy
* The existence of a successful educational process.

For instance, a poor grid of electricity makes less improbable the existence of computers networks or the existence of higher education institutions. The absence of freedom might diminish or delay the pursuits of acquiring new knowledge. Also, the poor development of educational institutions from a society affects the creativity of people belonging to that society.

Knowledge divide in gender, race, ethnicity and social class

First, it was noticed that (UNESCO, 2005)a great difference exists between the North and the South(rich countries vs. poor countries). The development of knowledge depends on spreading Internet and computer technology and also on the development of education in these countries. If a country has attained higher literacy level then this will result in having higher level of knowledge. Unfortunately, higher education is well developed only in North America and Western Europe. Although, there are enough opportunities to develop primary education in all countries around the world, for higher education chances are dim. Indeed, UNESCO's report details many social issues in knowledge divide related to globalization. There was noticed a knowledge divide in respect to
* Gender
* Race
* Ethnicity
* Social class

ee also

* Digital divide
* Knowledge society
* Knowledge gap hypothesis
* Knowledge

References

*Hakkarainen, K., & Palonen, T. (2003). Patterns of female and male students' participation in peer interaction in computer-supported learning. Computers & Education, 40, 327-342.( [http://innovations.oise.utoronto.ca/~jhewitt/ctl1603/papers/Hakkarainen%20&%20Palonen%202003.pdf] )
*Information Society Commission (2002). Building the Knowledge Society - Report to Government, December 2002 retrieved from http://www.isc.ie/downloads/know.pdf
*Scardamalia, M. (2003). Crossing the digital divide: Literacy as by-product of knowledge building. Journal of Distance Education, 17 (Suppl. 3, Learning Technology Innovation in Canada), 78-81. ( [http://ikit.org/fulltext/2003_Crossing.htm] )
*Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2003). Knowledge building environments: Extending the limits of the possible in education and knowledge work. In A. DiStefano, K. E. Rudestam, & R. Silverman (Eds.), Encyclopedia of distributed learning (pp. 269-272). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ( [http://ikit.org/fulltext/2003_KBE.pdf] )
*UNESCO World Report (2005) Towards Knowledge Societies; retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001418/141843e.pdf

External links

* http://www.knowledge-divide.org Research Project "The changing knowledge divide in the global economy"