Can technology offer solutions to inequality?
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- America is seeing levels of inequality it hasn't experienced for a century. And if you believe some technologists, that can be addressed with gadgets.
For example, here's Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talking about the Internet: "The richest 500 million (people in the world) have way more money than the next six billion combined. You solve that by getting everyone online."
This view isn't limited to Silicon Valley.
"Technology is a game-changer in the field of education," says US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. It will "improve achievement for all and increase equity for children."
In 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a new foreign policy doctrine called "Internet freedom." She said that information networks could alleviate global poverty because they are "a great leveler."
But does technology really address inequality?
Over the last decade, I've looked hard for ways in which digital devices can help the world's poorest communities. Together with colleagues in India, I developed text-free software to aid non-literate home servants in urban India. In rural Uganda, I explored electronic tools that delivered agricultural information to rural farmers. In Brazil, I studied educational technologies in government schools. In all, I've been involved in more than 50 such projects to boost agriculture, education, governance, healthcare, and micro finance with personal computers, mobile phones, digital cameras and other devices.
But one pattern was repeated: What people got out of technology depended on what wealth, education, and social ties they already had. Technology is powerful, but its power depends on its human users.
This is true as much in America as elsewhere. Massively open online courses, or MOOCs, were once thought to bring education to the disenfranchised. With content made available free online, anyone with Internet access could learn, or so it was hoped. Studies show, however, that those who complete MOOCs are mostly college-educated working professionals, not jobless high-school dropouts.
Zach Braff raised more than $3 million for his movie project on Kickstarter. The site average is $6,000 for the rest of us. Though anyone can apply to fundraise on the crowdfunding platform, not everyone has the star power to draw thousands of donors.
Over the last four decades, America has enjoyed a golden age of digital innovation. Yet during the same span of time, the poverty rate increased, social mobility stagnated, and inequality skyrocketed. Contrary to Zuckerberg, "getting everyone online" didn't prevent the 1% from pulling away.
How can it be that something that benefits so many of us could worsen inequality? The simple answer is that technology helps us in proportion to what we already have. That is to say, digital tools benefit the haves more than the have-nots; they don't add the same, fixed benefit for everyone.
This idea seems obvious, but it runs counter to the Utopian claims of tech enthusiasts. And, it has unexpected consequences: Among other things, technology widely disseminated only amplifies inequalities. Ivy League graduates are better equipped to learn from online courses than people who struggled through high school. Celebrities see their social media posts travel farther than those with a limited circle of followers. Power brokers with a high-society Rolodex can do more with email than a homeless person in the inner city. Even when the technology is the same, the outcomes diverge.
Technology is less a bridge, and more a jack – it widens socio-economic gaps.
Social entrepreneurs suggest that by offering products free or at low cost, they are closing the digital divide and democratizing access. There's no doubt that more people are on Facebook because it's free to users. But the lesson of technology's amplifying power is that democratization isn't enough. Nothing short of a deliberate allocation of resources in favor of the less wealthy and the less powerful can shrink social divides – and that decision lies with politics, not technology.
Cheaper gadgets don't change the fact that rich, powerful people can always afford more. Smart tools don't overcome the advantage of the better-educated. Even when free, technologies don't dispel relative advantages.
If inequality is the problem, we need something other than technological solutions.