This is a good point. We found many occasions in our early UNDP
experimentation with e-LISTS where southern access was through northern
servers. This included ex-pat nationals who were studying/posted
temporarily to northern countries, as well as those using northern dialup
services from southern sites.
But is this the only, or even the major dimension on which we should
judge the socalled divide? Other factors where enormous variability
exists between countries/continents include costs of telephone or other
access, connect reliability, service backup, not to mention cultural
inhibitors, censorship, and other government delimiters (e.g. routine and
invasive surveillance).... one of the biggest dividing issues is the
dominance of the English language... I went through JFK airport in New
York earlier this month and saw a billboard in the American Airlines
Terminal proposing that Chinese would be the most used INTERNET language
within a decade, and (said the announcement) `that's when it gets
interesting'.....
Richard Heeks wrote:
>
> The global digital divide between North and South - the
> industrialised and the developing nations - is undoubtedly great.
> But it is also overestimated.
>
> Why? Because we tend to use invalid models of connectivity in
> the South: models that rely on Northern notions of one email
> account serving one individual; and pre-global notions of
> Internet hosts and accounts merely serving their host country.
>
>
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