Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp.

211–27


Time machines and virtual portals:
the spatialities of the digital divide
Mark Graham
Oxford Internet Institute
University of Oxford, UK

Abstract: It is frequently argued that the ‘digital divide’ is one of the most significant development
issues facing impoverished regions of the world. Yet, even though the term is inherently spatial,
there have been no sustained efforts to examine the geographic assumptions underlying discourses
of the ‘digital divide.’ This article traces the history of the term, reviewing some of its tangible
effects and placing a focus on the temporal and spatial assumptions underpinning ‘digital divide’
discourses. Alternative formulations of the ‘digital divide’ are offered which take into account the
hybrid, scattered, ordered and individualized nature of cyberspaces.

Key words: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), digital divide, geography,
Internet, ICT for development, virtuality

I The information revolution and a
‘digital divide’
There has been much talk of an economic
and social revolution taking place over the
last few decades. This revolution has been as-
signed a variety of terms: a ‘computer revolu-
tion,’ a ‘knowledge economy,’ an ‘information
revolution,’ or a ‘third-wave’ in human his-
tory bringing about a post-industrial, post-
service and post-modern ‘network society’
(Benkler, 2006; Berkeley, 1962; Castells,
1996; Dahrendorf, 1977; Drucker, 1969; Jones,
1982; Machlup, 1962; Toffler, 1980). These
revolutions have been widely touted as having
far-reaching and largely-positive outcomes for
society in general. It has been argued that the
information revolution can take away power
from centralized structures, spread democracy
(see Ayres, 1999; Barber, 1998) and of course
spell the end of poverty (Purcell and Toland,
2004). Network connections are therefore
posited as crucial to obtaining the raw materials
of the post-industrial, third-wave, networked
society (Castells, 2002).
There have always been concerns that
divergent levels of access to Information
and Communication Technologies (ICTs)
and uneven global flows of information
will exacerbate economic and socio-spatial
segregation. However, it is only relatively
recently that the ‘digital divide’ has entered
into popular discourse. The term has had far-
reaching effects: hundreds of projects around
the world are framed with the intention of
solving or bridging a ‘digital divide’ and billions
of dollars have been spent to achieve such
goals. This article therefore begins by charting
the history of the ‘digital divide’ from concerns

© 2011 SAGE Publications 10.1177/146499341001100303

212 Time machines and virtual portals
about connecting the global peripheries to the
imperial centres in the era of the telegraph to
the coining of the term at the beginning of the
twenty-first century.
In order to understand why the trope of a
‘digital divide’ has been able to command such
large investments into technology projects
(i.e. resources that could conceivably be in-
vested in a variety of other economic and social
development programmes), the temporal and
spatial assumptions embedded into popular
uses of the term are examined in detail. This
article continues by arguing that solutions
to (or bridges across) the ‘digital divide’ are
commonly employed to posit movement
along temporal and spatial axes of develop-
ment. Like many other terms adopted into
development discourse over the past few cen-
turies, the ‘digital divide’ is frequently used to
describe an obstacle to movement of people
and places temporally along a pre-defined path
of development.
The term is also frequently used to make a
uniquely-spatial argument. Within academic,
policy and popular literature, there is often
a common assumption that the Internet has
brought into being a distinct type of geography.
Two nodes on a network (e.g. a Londoner sell-
ing books using an online marketplace and a
Parisian buying books using that same online
marketplace) are described as sharing more
than a topological connection; they are instead
seen to be occupying the same virtual space,
cyberspace or ‘global village’ (cf. McLuhan,
1962). The ontology of a global village is crucial
to understanding the discursive effects of the
‘digital divide.’ Within this worldview, people
and places can be separated into two groups:
those with access to the ‘global market place’
and ‘information revolution,’ and those unable
to gain access and participate. As such, it is
easy to see how such enormous amount of
resources are spent to end what a number of
prominent commentators such as Colin Powell
have dubbed as ‘digital apartheid’.
Finally, the article concludes by rethinking
the ‘digital divide’ in order to employ a more
Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27
grounded vision of the relationships between
geography and technology. Specifically, by
taking into account the economic, cultural,
political and technological positionalities of
each person attempting to access cyberspace,
as well as both the material and cyber-divides
that obstruct communication through the
Internet, we can move away from some of
the problematic imaginings of the Internet as
a panacea for economic development.
The origins of the ‘digital divide’
Virtual and non-proximate connections are
a cornerstone of the new economy and net-
work society. To be disconnected is to be both
economically and socially absent from the
information/knowledge revolution. This idea
that being disconnected from the tools and the
content of the information revolution could
cause social polarisation amongst individuals,
groups, and regions has been highlighted for
almost as long as commentators have been
noting the socio-economic importance of
technological changes.
Even before the invention of electronic
computers and the coining of the ‘digital
divide,’ there was, in the era of the telegraph,
a well-circulated idea that communication
technologies would bring about positive eco-
nomic and social development in the global
periphery (Marvin, 1988). During this time,
one of the inventors of the telephone, Amos
Dolbear, remarked that ‘any device that
enlarges one’s environment and makes the rest
of the world one’s neighbours is an efficient
mechanical missionary of civilisation and
helps to save the world from insularity where
barbarism hides’ (quoted in Marvin, 1988: 192).
In other words, communication technologies
would develop the disconnected peripheries of
the world into cultural and economic models
of the centre (see also Tesla, 1993).
More recently, Singer (1970) highlighted
an international technological dualism be-
tween rich and poor countries, while the
term ‘New World Information Order’ was
used within UNESCO to describe to uneven

global flows of information (Mowlana, 1997).
Castells (1998) has similarly argued that the
information revolution would exacerbate
socio-spatial segregation and create ‘dual cities’
of inhabitants that occupy vastly different
spheres of knowledge.
It was around this time that the trope of
a ‘digital divide’ began to emerge. Its exact
origins are unknown (Compaine, 2001), but it
became rapidly popularized due to efforts by
high-ranking US government officials (most
notably President Clinton, Vice-president
Gore, and Larry Irving, the head of the
National Telecommunications Infrastructure
Administration (NTIA)) (Servon, 2002).
Perhaps because few people could anticipate
the ways that the Internet would reorganize
socio-economic relationships across the globe,
the term was initially used to simply describe
access (or a lack thereof ) to computers. For
example, in a report by the NTIA in 1998 (one
of the first references to the term), the ‘digital
divide’ is specifically used to refer to ‘computer
ownership and usage’ (NTIA, 1998).
In more recent usages, focus has shifted
from access to computing hardware to access
to communication technologies or more
specifically: the Internet. Often it is even used
to refer to differences between reliable and
fast connections to the Internet and slow and
intermittent ones (Compaine, 2001). With
the advent of ubiquitous computing and the
peer-production of information (Graham,
2011; Graham, 2010b), it is likely that the
‘digital divide’ will increasingly also be used to
refer to integration with the many ubiquitous
networked technologies embedded into daily
life (Greenfield, 2006). Yet, as the Internet
remains the focus of most contemporary
references to the ‘digital divide,’ the remainder
of this article will continue to equate the
‘digital divide’ with access to the Internet.
Nonetheless, it should be noted that instead of
having a fixed meaning, the term can be seen
to be a moving signifier, keeping track with
concurrent technological changes.
Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27
Mark Graham 213
There has been a recent explosion in usage
of the term where, for example, both the
World Bank and the OECD define the ‘digital
divide’ as a gap between people and places
with regard to their access to ‘information
and communication technologies (ICTs) and
their use of the Internet for a wide variety of
activities’ (OECD, 2008). Almost every major
international development agency now has a
programme to tackle the ‘digital divide’ and
every industrialized nation (as well as many in
the global South) devotes significant resources
to reversing domestic ‘digital divides.’
One of the earliest was the E-rate1 pro-
grammeme in the United States, where
legislation was passed allowing a fee to be
levied on all interstate and international tele-
communications services. Proceeds were
then disbursed to schools and libraries to
provide telecommunications service (usually
Internet access). Over one billion dollars has
been allocated to the programme and during
negotiations on how to fund the programme,
many saw even that figure as insufficient to
tackling the digital divide (Macavinta 1998).
Another scheme, and one of the most cited
examples of a project that aims to reduce the
‘digital divide’ is the One Laptop per Child
(OLPC) programme. Hundreds of newspaper
and magazine articles promote the project as a
solution to the digital divide, and the project’s
website even contains one hundred and forty
references to the term. The goal of the pro-
gramme is to distribute inexpensive laptops
to children across the world. With 1.5 million
laptop orders to date, the project has at-
tracted at least US$100 million in funding.
There are, however, plans to massively expand
the project and secure US$2.6 billion from the
public and private sectors to distribute 100
million OLPC laptops (Deva, 2008).
The ‘digital divide’ has been recognized
as an issue at a range of scales including urban
and regional governments. For instance, many
of the (at least) thirty six cities2 across the
world that have invested heavily to establish
free wifi networks accessible to all residents
214 Time machines and virtual portals
also frame their work within the trope of
a digital divide (Gibbons and Ruth, 2006;
Goth, 2005; Kvasny and Keil, 2005; Tapia
et al., 2006). Even former California Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that
US $460 million will be made available to
combat the ‘digital divide’ – defined as ‘the
lack of broadband data transmission to rural
and poor urban areas’ (Geissinger, 2006).
The private sector has also contributed
enormous funds to ‘digital divide’ related devel-
opment programmes. For example, Google
and the HSBC are investing US$65 million to
launch medium orbit satellites that will pro-
vide Internet access to the three billion people
without Internet access (Kirk, 2008); in 2006,
Intel announced that they would spend one
billion dollars to extend wifi networks across
the globe and train teachers (Markoff, 2006).
Myriad other smaller projects also employ the
‘digital divide’ as a framing mechanism. While
motivations are likely more economic than
altruistic, the fact that such enormous sums
are being spent under the banner of alleviating
a ‘digital divide’, does highlight the discursive
weight that the idea contains.
The sums invested under the banner
of reducing a ‘digital divide’ are staggering.
The combined figures mentioned above are
alone larger than the gross domestic products
of some countries and beg two questions:
Why are such massive sums invested in the
name of bridging a ‘digital divide’ and what
outcomes do funding organisations expect
to achieve by narrowing ‘digital divides’? To
answer these questions, we can turn to the
ways that the trope is being put to use. The
following section therefore outlines some of
the temporal and spatial assumptions that
are frequently embroiled into ‘digital divide’
discourses. The temporal assumptions will
only be covered briefly, primarily because simi-
lar arguments have already been made by a
number of development theorists. The spatial
assumptions, however, are more unique to
discourses surrounding the ‘digital divide’ and
will thus be brought to the fore.
Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27
II Ontological underpinnings
Irrespective of how any ‘digital divide’ dis-
course is formulated, the trope is always used
to refer to a gap in capabilities, potentials and
possibilities between different groups or places.
Furthermore, a ‘digital divide’ is never posited
as a beneficial or positive outcome; it is rather
something to be alleviated, filled, narrowed,
reduced, stepped over or shrunk. However,
there remain a range of diverse visions about
what the precise outcomes of bridging a ‘digital
divide’ would be. This is in part because the
trope of a ‘digital divide’ is inherently spatial and
as such necessarily rests on distinct ontologies
of the relationships between time, space and
technology.
Temporal assumptions
There is a long history in the academic and
policy literatures of seeing development as
a progression along a linear temporal path.
Rostow (1960), for example, created a five-
stage model of economic growth and asserted
that all societies could be placed somewhere
in-between a traditional subsistence economy
and the end-point of ‘high mass consumption’.
Much of the rhetoric on the ‘digital divide’ is
no exception. On the temporal path of digital
development, many posit a forwards and a
backwards with people and places who are
behind, using ICTs to ‘catch up’ with those
who are in front. Norris (2001: 5), for example,
argues that:
…most poorer societies, lagging far behind,
plagued by multiple burdens of debt, disease,
and ignorance, may join the digital world
decades later and, in the long-term, may
ultimately fail to catch up.
The idea of a linear path of digital devel-
opment is also prominent in language em-
ployed by large international organisations.
For instance, after the 2000 G8 summit in
Okinawa, the group of eight of the world’s
most influential nations declared that:
The challenge of bridging the international
information and knowledge divide cannot…

be underestimated. We recognise the priority
being given to this by many developing coun-
tries. Indeed, those developing countries
which fail to keep up with the accelerating
pace of IT innovation may not have the oppor-
tunity to participate fully in the information
society and economy. (G8, 2000)
It has also been argued that communication
technologies can be employed to enable
‘catching up’ to happen at a sub-national
level. Borgida et al. (2002: 128), for example,
proposed that:
In order to maintain a healthy economy and
a vibrant workforce, electronic networks
are one way some rural communities are
attempting to catch up to urban areas.
Others still point out that different demo-
graphic groups separated by a ‘digital divide’
can ‘catch up’. For instance, Hoffman and
Novak (1998) argue that socio-economic
racial differences will ‘disappear as African
Americans “catch up” to whites in terms of
time spent online’.3 Even amongst the few
authors who maintain that the ‘digital divide’ is
not a pressing issue, the language of ‘catching
up’ is prominent:
… though developing countries have fallen
behind economically over the past decades,
they managed to catch up digitally. (Fink and
Kenny, 2003: 19)
Using ICTs to bridge a ‘digital divide’ is thus
in many cases seen as a way of moving people
and places temporally along a pre-defined
path of development. This line of thought
is perhaps best articulated by Nirj Deva, a
member of the European Parliament, who
in relaying plans to make universal access to
ICTs the ninth United Nations Millennium
Development Goal exclaimed that ‘We are
not delivering a computer. We are delivering
a time machine. A time machine that is so
enormously transformational that everything
after that is changed. Changed forever’ (Deva,
2008). As James Ferguson (1999) and others
have previously noted, the linear, teleological
assumptions that underlie much development
Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27
Mark Graham 215
theory and practice can greatly reduce the
possibilities for open politics (see also Escobar,
1995; Ferguson, 1994). It is clear that digital-
development is no exception and imagina-
tions of linear temporal paths of development
can similarly close down discussion and reduce
the scope for contingent alternatives.
Spatial assumptions
Some commentators have suggested that both
the discursive power and the problematics
inherent to the ‘digital divide’ rest on techno-
logical determinist uses of the trope (see
Warschauer, 2003a). For example, Warschauer
(2003b) notes that the ‘digital divide’ is
posited as a technological problem that has a
necessary technological solution. While the
simplicity of such arguments makes them
simultaneously appealing and problematic
(albeit to different audiences), I would, rather,
maintain that a lot of the power embedded in
discourses about the ‘digital divide’ lies in the
fact that they are able to postulate movement
not only in time, but also across space. Much
of the spatiality embedded into rhetoric about
the ‘digital divide’ refers to the geography of the
divide itself. That is, a divide can be thought
to exist between the North and South, East
and West, urban and rural, etc. However,
the ‘digital divide’ is increasingly being used to
refer not to a divide in capabilities or technical
ability, but rather to a more existential divide:
namely, an actual divide in shared co-presence
in cyberspace.
Cyberspace
To fully explore the ways that space is con-
ceptualized and used as an epistemological
and ontological framework within discourses
of a ‘digital divide’, it is first necessary to more
thoroughly explore the nature of cyberspace
itself. Like the ‘digital divide,’ cyberspace is
an inherently geographic concept. When
employed as a metaphor within the contexts
of discussions about socio-economic change,
cyberspace can become a useful heuristic
216 Time machines and virtual portals
device upon which issues of spatial division and
unequal access can be framed.
However, cyberspace has often taken on
an ontic role. Cyberspace, in this sense, is
conceived of as both an ethereal, alternate
dimension which is simultaneously infinite
and everywhere (because everyone with an
Internet connection can enter), and as fixed
in a distinct location, albeit a non-physical one
(because despite being infinitely accessible,
all willing participants are thought to arrive
into the same marketspace, civic forum and
social space). Cyberspace, in this sense, truly
becomes a global village. Therefore, cyber-
space, like other spaces, has a mappable
form, but exists beyond the material world
(Batty and Miller, 2000; Dodge and Kitchin,
2001). It becomes a shared virtual reality and
a consensual hallucination (Gibson, 1984),
which is ‘generating an entirely new dimension
to geography’ (Batty, 1997: 339).
The precise sources of this, a priori onto-
logy of cyberspace as simultaneously infinite
and fixed, are unclear. One argument that
has been put forward is that cyberspace as a
‘global village’ satisfies a dualistic philosophy
of space that has only relatively recently been
replaced with a monistic one (Wertheim,
1999). Descartes, for instance, separated
reality into the res extensa (the realm of cor-
poreal substance and matter) and the res
cognitans (the ethereal realm of thoughts and
non-material, spiritual existence). Variations of
this dualistic worldview were widely accepted
in western society until the materialism of
the scientific revolution resulted in a shift
towards an understanding of reality as being
comprised solely of the physical realm. With
the invention of the Internet, Margaret
Wertheim argues that ‘the emergence of a
new kind of nonphysical space [cyberspace] was
almost guaranteed to attract “spiritual” and
even “heavenly” dreams’ and thus be viewed
as a ‘technological res cognitans’ (Wertheim,
1999: 38).
Even before the coining of the term ‘cyber-
space’, commentators were speculating that
Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27
synchronous communication technologies, like
the telegraph, would bring humanity together
in some sort of shared space (Standage,
1998). For instance, in 1846, in a proposal
to connect European and American cities
via an Atlantic telegraph, it was stated that
one of the benefits would be the fact that
‘all of the inhabitants of the earth would be
brought into one intellectual neighbourhood
and be at the same time perfectly freed from
those contaminations which might under
other circumstances be received’ (Marvin,
1988: 201). Twelve years later, after the
completion of the Atlantic telegraph, The
Times proclaimed that ‘the Atlantic is dried
up, and we become in reality as well as in
wish one country’ (quoted in Standage,
1998: 80). In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan’s
philosophy of media posited a future not too
different from proclamations about the power
of communication technologies a century
earlier. He noted that ‘electric circuitry has
overthrown the regime of “time” and “space”
and pours upon us instantly and continuously
concerns of all other men. It has reconsti-
tuted dialogue on a global scale...” Time”
has ceased, “space” has vanished. We now
live in a global village’ (McLuhan and Fiore,
1967: 63).
Such ideas were equally prevalent in
the early days of the Internet. John Barlow
(1996), for example, in his Declaration of the
Independence of Cyberspace, boldly asserted
that ‘cyberspace does not lie within your
borders’ and ‘ours is a world that is both every-
where and nowhere, but it is not where bod-
ies live’. Trotter Hardy (1994), in a discussion
about appropriate legal regimes for cyberspace,
similarly posits the idea that cyberspace is a
distinct and separate space.
Representations or allusions to the Inter-
net in popular culture often reinforce the
ontic role given to cyberspace. For instance,
Dave Chappelle’s (2004) comedy sketch, titled
What if the Internet was a place that you could
go to? in which he strolls around cyberspace,
deliberately gives the Internet physical, spatial

and fixed properties.4 The Matrix trilogy of
films, which in many ways reverses the ideas
of cyberspace and physical space, can similarly
be seen to assign to the virtual an ontic role
(Wachowski and Wachowski, 1999). The
Matrix (an illusion of the physical world) can
be exited from anywhere using a telephone.
Doing so brings the user of the telephone
back into a shared alternate dimension. Neal
Stephenson’s (1992) novel, Snow Crash, also
describes a three-dimensional evolution of
the Internet (which he dubs ‘the Metaverse’)
in which users can attain co-presence in a vir-
tual dimension accessible from anywhere on
earth. There have actually been a number of
highly successful real-life implementations of
versions of Stephenson’s Metaverse. Second
Life (with over fifteen million users) and World
of Warcraft (with over eleven million users) are
two of the most popular examples.
It is likely that development professionals
have also played a hand in either creating or
reproducing this discourse through reports
by, or reports used by, international organisa-
tions. Kirkman and Sachs’ Global Information
Technology Report, for instance, implies that
there is ‘a’ market that can be tapped by enter-
ing the infinity of cyberspace (Kirkman et al.,
2002). Similar conceptions of ‘a’ global mar-
ket can be found in the World Economic
Forum’s other Global Information Technology
Reports and Global Competitiveness Reports, as
well as publications by the World Trade Organ-
ization, various UN agencies, the World Bank
and countless other international organisa-
tions and NGOs (cf. Porter et al., 2002).
The World Bank’s ‘Artisan as Entrepreneur’
project supports concrete programmes that
aim to bring ‘crafts from Latin America, Asia,
and Africa onto the global market’ (World
Bank, 2000: 3, emphasis added). Hundreds
of articles in the popular press recycle similar
stories about the potentials of e-commerce
and the Internet as a means of providing
access to ‘a’ global market that can be entered
through the gateway of the Internet (cf.
Faucon, 2001). Many of these articles again
Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27
Mark Graham 217
contain the idea that cyberspace contains
‘a’ fixed marketplace, which despite being a
singular location, is infinitely accessible.
It is interesting then, to note the differ-
ences between the ontology of cyberspace as
simultaneously infinite and fixed that is pre-
sent in the words of businesses, development
organizations, and much of the media, and
the ways that academic geographers have
theorized the existence of cyberspace. Geo-
graphers have largely moved beyond the
idea that space-transcending possibilities of
cyberspace will render geography meaningless
(cf. Cairncross, 1997; Couclelis, 1996). Spatial
differences continue to exist because, far from
being uniformly distributed, communications
technologies and opportunities for production
and consumption have a pronounced geo-
graphic bias (Castells, 2002; Dodge and
Kitchin, 2001; Gorman and Malecki, 2002;
Townsend, 2001; Zook, 2000). In part because
of its geographic bias, cyberspace is far from
being a ‘global village’ or a universally accessible
marketplace and indeed has its own mappable
geographies and uneven topologies (Brunn
and Dodge, 2001; Zook, 2005, 2006) (see for
example, the map of the structure of cyber-
space in Figure 1).
Cyberspace and the ‘digital divide’
Graham (1998) argues for complex and parallel
considerations of electronic and physical pro-
pinquity. Technology is described as being
an appendage to life in the physical world
rather than a replacement. Communications
technologies can alter and redefine relative
distance, but they are unable to cancel out
geography, and as a result we live in a state of
suspension between our de-localized presences
and our physical existences (Castells, 2002;
Robins, 1995).
Others have suggested envisioning cyber-
space ‘as a socially constructed discourse
that simultaneously reflects and constitutes
social reality’, in order to focus on the social
outcomes it brings about (Warf, 2001: 6).
Kitchin (1998) recommends that cyberspace
218 Time machines and virtual portals

Figure 1 A map of the Internet

Source: This image was created by Matt Britt. Available at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/
d/d2/Internet_map_1024.jpg
Note: The map is only thirty per cent of the class C networks reachable in 2005. Nodes represent IP addresses
and the length of each line is indicative of the delay between those nodes. Lines are variably shaded according
to the domain suffixes associated with each address.

be conceptualized as existing in a symbiotic situated in real space’ (Cohen, 2007: 218).

relationship with geographic space. Cohen
(2007) similarly suggests that cyberspace is
an evolution and extension of everyday spatial
practice rather than a separate space. She
notes, ‘cyberspace is in and of the real-space
world, and is so not (only) because real-space
sovereigns decree it, or (only) because real-
space sovereigns can exert physical power
over real-space users, but also and more
fundamentally because cyberspace users are
In other words, the Internet and other
ICTs can give rise to an individual sphere of
hybrid geography in which certain distance-
transcending activities can be performed
while being simultaneously embedded in, and
influenced by, the performer’s positionality in
material space.
It should be noted that, the global village
conceptualization of cyberspace is far from
a dominant discourse. For example, some

Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27


popular writings about the Internet do often
allude to notions of hybridity, and it is unlikely
that many people imagine that they are en-
tering into another dimension when they are
Googling, Facebooking and Twittering from
their mobile devices. Yet, it remains that such
conceptualizations of a hybrid virtual/physical
sphere of existence for Internet users rarely
enter into discussions of a ‘digital divide’. Uses
of the ‘digital divide’ are instead often grounded
in an ontology that presents cyberspace as
being simultaneously infinite and fixed. Hence,
the ‘digital divide’ becomes not a statistical
divide between people or places, but rather
an existential divide between those that can
access a shared cyberspace and those on the
other side of a gulf who remain rooted to the
physical world.
This ontic divide becomes all the more
significant when seen in the contexts of the
‘information revolution’ and the literatures on
the networked society. Those without access
to the ‘global village’ are therefore seen to
be segregated from the contemporary socio-
economic revolution taking place. Some, such
as the former US secretary of State Colin
Powell (2000) and the chief executive of
3Com (Macavinta, 1998), have on separate
occasions gone so far as to term this exclusion
digital apartheid’.
When relying on the ‘global village’ con-
ceptualization of what ICTs can do to space,
it is easy to see how the discourse of a ‘digital
divide’ has been able to attract such enormous
amounts of funding and interest. But it still
remains to be seen whether powerful claims
about the effects of ICTs on those who are
left out of the information revolution will prove
prescient. Because of the contemporaneity of
the Internet, there remains no comprehen-
sive body of empirical literature on the effects
of ICTs and cyberspace on socio-economic
processes. However, existing research does
indicate that it is unlikely that ICTs can
ever allow co-presence in a singular ‘global
village’.
For instance, one study on attempts to
use the Internet to bridge a ‘digital divide’
Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27
Mark Graham 219
in northeast Thailand in order to allow silk
weavers access to a global marketplace found
that a priori ontologies of cyberspace that
posit a universally accessible yet fixed and
bounded dimension rarely match up to the
experiences that silk sellers have with the
Internet (Graham, 2008a, 2010a). The Inter-
net was not being used as a middle ground
or an intermediate virtual space that bridges
non-proximate buyers and sellers. Instead,
producers and merchants that were able to
use the Internet as a tool to sell silk were, in
most cases, interacting with non-proximate
customers through highly individualized and
non-transparent conduits (see also, Graham,
2008b; Sheppard, 2002). Transactions thus
took place not in an alternate virtual space,
but in the real world through virtual conduits.
The primary reason for the disconnect be-
tween many of the oft-repeated, a priori
ontologies of cyberspace and the realities of
concrete attempts to use ICTs to reduce a
‘digital divide’ was that cyberspace is not a
container of a singular globally-accessible
market. The study demonstrated that market
spaces brought into being by the Internet are
instead often scattered, disconnected, indi-
vidual, hybrid and perhaps most important,
ranked and ordered. Warschauer (2003a: 297),
similarly argues that:
…just as the ubiquitous presence of other
media, such as television and radio, has done
nothing to overcome information inequality
in the United States, there is little reason
to believe that the mere presence of the
Internet will have a better result.
In the contexts of the Egyptian educational
system, Warschauer found that despite
significant expenditures to reduce a ‘digital
divide’, students were never being teleported
into virtual forums of learning or cyber-
libraries. 5 Instead, despite the necessary
hardware being in place in schools across
the country, access to knowledge remained
constrained by multiple layers of restrictive
political, social and bureaucratic factors. Here
220 Time machines and virtual portals
again, it is clear that cyberspace cannot be
viewed as a disconnected, floating dimension.
The Internet was instead embedded into the
many restrictive social, political and economic
factors that exist outside of the virtual realm.
In both of these examples, it is clear that a
reliance on the ‘digital divide’ discourse and
its necessary linkages to specific ontologies of
cyberspace obscures and even depoliticizes
solutions to fundamental problems related
to the ability to access information and com-
municate non-proximately.
III Re-theorizing the ‘digital divide’
The critiques offered in this article are not
meant to suggest that the notion of a ‘digital
divide’ is theoretically ineffectual. This article is
in addition by no means an attempt to suggest
that efforts made to connect the disconnected
should not be made. Rather, a richer formulation
of the ‘digital divide’ is needed: specifically, one
that takes into account theorizations of hybrid
and embedded cyberspaces. Grounding any
theorization of a ‘digital divide’ in alternate
spatial underpinnings would thus allow more
realistic expectations of spatial effects of digital
technologies to be created.
The ‘digital divide’ should not be con-
ceived of as a singular chasm separating an
Internet user from communication, knowledge
or interaction. Such a conceptualization would
imply that, were a metaphorical bridge to
be built, the Internet user could easily pass
over the chasm and enter the cyberspace
that she or he was previously divided from.
The spatiality of this metaphor is grounded
in a vision of cyberspace as a ‘global village’
and, as such, allows both cyberspace and the
‘digital divide’ to take on ontic roles. Instead,
two types of divides should be recognized: the
physical divides separating people from access
to cyberspaces and the cyber-divides that
obstruct movement between cyberspaces.
Material divides
Rather than imagining cyberspace as a
‘global village’ that can be stepped into, it
Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27
is helpful to use Julie Cohen’s formulation
of the cyberspace metaphor. Cohen argues
that cyberspace ‘does not refer to abstract,
Cartesian space, but instead expresses an
experienced spatiality mediated by embodied
human cognition. Cyberspace in this sense is
relative, mutable, and constituted via the inter-
actions among practice, conceptualisation, and
representation’. In other words, cyberspaces
operate as ‘as both extension and evolution
of everyday spatial practice’ (Cohen, 2007)
and are perpetually created and re-created
through highly-individualized interactions.
Cyberspace is therefore not a singular ontic
entity and no amount of work to bridge a
‘digital divide’ could ever create such a space.
School children in Egypt, village weavers in
Thailand and everyone else thought to be on
the wrong side of a ‘digital divide’ cannot enter
into a ‘global village’ to learn and trade be-
cause a ‘global village’ has no ontic basis.
The concept of a ‘digital divide’ should thus
be pluralized, localized and grounded in more
appropriate spatial frameworks. The initial
material divide concerns a lack of access to
the entry points of cyberspace. This divide is
almost entirely a question of resources. People
need the hardware (computer, modem, router,
etc.), software (i.e. browser and email client)
and an Internet connection (either hardwired
or a wireless access point). Without access
to all of the above, there can be no entry
into any cyberspaces. Although the material
‘digital divide’ revolves entirely around access
to hardware, software and a connection point,
the solution to it cannot be entirely economic.
Myriad other factors related to the politics and
practices of access (such as gender, class and
age) can be as equally inhibitive as financial
barriers. Telecentres and Internet cafes, for
example, are often highly-gendered spaces
and can be unwelcoming to women, while
wifi access points by their nature discriminate
against the poorest members of society by
requiring users to own a laptop computer. Many
of these points have indeed been recognized

in recent formulations of the ‘digital divide’
(cf. Barzilai-Nahon, 2006; Chakraborty and
Bosman, 2005; Crang et al., 2006; Gilbert and
Masucci, 2005; Gilbert et al., 2008; Grasland
and Puel, 2007; Schwanen and Kwan, 2008;
Selwyn, 2004).
Yet, in part because of the existence of the
‘global village’ ontology of cyberspace, there is
often a pollyannish assumption that once the
material ‘digital divide’ is bridged, the many
problems attributed to ‘digital divides’ will also
vanish. Or, in other words, despite the myriad
barriers to access, once people are placed
in front of connected terminals, the ‘digital
divide’ becomes bridged and the previously
disconnected are consequently able to enter
cyberspace.
Virtual-divides
Once connected, entirely different divides are
potentially encountered within the experienced
and imagined fabrics of cyberspace. After
overcoming the initial physical divide, Internet
users still have not necessarily achieved virtual
co-presence with all the other Internet users,
nor are they free or able to enter all cyber
places. The map of the Internet (in Figure 1)
illustrated a useful conceptualization of the
topologies of the Internet. Instead of being a
singular location, users are able to engage with
(or through) billions of nodes which are often
poorly networked.
Even when there is a large amount of
convergence to specific cyberspaces in which
co-presence can be attained (traditional chat
rooms or more recent virtual environments6
that can be embedded into any webpage are
examples), cyber presence is rarely static.
Internet users navigate through not only the
network of the Internet, but also through
the often labyrinthine topologies of individual
websites.
The most apparent are those related to
censorship and the securitization of cyber-
spaces (Deibert, 2003). Nation states, gov-
ernment agencies, the private sector and
Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27
Mark Graham 221
even individuals are all able to construct layers
of censorship that effectively make parts of
the Internet inaccessible (cf. Faris, Wang
and Palfrey, 2008). These attempts to block
access to cyberspaces include: the situation
in North Korea where only a few government
officials are permitted to access the Inter-
net (Reporters Without Borders, 2006); the
French Government’s successful attempts to
restrict the visibility of Nazi memorabilia on-
line (Drissel, 2006); the restriction of access to
websites deemed to threaten national security
in a variety of countries including China,
Iran, Saudi Arabia and Thailand (Dann and
Haddow, 2007; Graham and Khosravi, 2002;
Hofheinz, 2005; Kluver and Banerjee, 2005;
Xue, 2005); efforts by businesses and schools
to limit access to only approved websites
(Hamade, 2008); and commercial censorship
software designed to prevent children from
accessing some websites.
In terms of virtual topology, there can
therefore never be a singular divide. Space
created within the Internet is not binary in the
sense that a person is either inside or outside,
separated by a ‘digital divide’. There are rather
countless small (although important and often
insurmountable) ‘digital divides’ preventing
movement through the topologies of the
Internet and limiting access to cyberspaces.
These divides can take myriad forms, but all
ultimately relate to issues of accessibility and
visibility. Three of the most common divides
are discussed below.
Cultural differences also play a large role in
determining the ways in which Internet users
are able to interact and access information
(cf. Recabarren, Nussbaum and Levia, 2008).
Language is likely the largest and most sig-
nificant barrier to access on the Internet. A
majority of Internet users are now non-native
English speakers (Shea, Ariguzo and White,
2007). However, it remains that English is a
dominant language on the Internet (Flammia
and Saunders, 2007) and despite recent
developments in machine translation, those
222 Time machines and virtual portals
not fluent in English are likely to face signifi-
cant barriers to both non-proximate communi-
cation and organizing online content into
meaning. The contexts and positionalities
of information sources and those accessing
virtual information also strongly influence
how information can be retrieved and used.
Withers and Grout (2006), for instance, in
their discussion of virtual archives, argue
that information on the Internet can often be
interpreted in ways that differ sharply from
the emotional and aesthetic relationships
between information sources and the readers
of information in the non-virtual world. Fur-
thermore, barriers exist which limit not only
the comprehension and interpretation of
content, but also its creation. For example,
digital ethnographies have shown that in wikis,
methods employed to resolve disagreements
about the ways a subject should be repre-
sented are frequently opaque and often favour
distinct demographics (usually young western
males) (O’Neil, 2009).
Finally, there are the divides brought about
by online visibility (or a lack thereof). There
are immense difficulties involved in being able
to organize, classify and move through the
thirty billion7 web pages on the Internet (cf.
Senécal, 2005). Ranking and ordering systems
(i.e. search engines and online directories) are
powerful factors which allow some informa-
tion to remain visible while other content stays
hidden. As a consequence, a website can exist
in cyberspace and be accessible from anywhere
in the world, but essentially be cloaked and
invisible if it is not networked. An issue faced
by those attempting to access the websites of
less well-known people and organizations is
the fact that all sorting, ordering and ranking
systems are inevitably hierarchical (Zook and
Graham, 2007a, 2007b). The Google search
engine, for example, has a search algorithm
that is modelled after the academic search
literature. The algorithm is designed under
the assumption that the number of hyperlinks
(and ultimately the rank of those hyperlinks)
Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27
to a page is an indication of the quality or im-
portance of that page. The ranking that a
webpage ultimately receives from a search
algorithm is critically important for online
visibility as research has shown that only a
small minority of Internet searchers move
beyond the first ten results presented to them
(Jansena et al., 2000).
In practice, this means that the websites of
organizations already well integrated into the
social and economic fabric of large segments of
society (e.g. the New York Times or Amazon.
com) are more likely to be made visible
than the websites of smaller organizations.
To return to the two examples used earlier
in the article, we can see that visibility can
cause divides for producers and consumers of
information. Many Thai silk sellers construct
elaborate websites which end up not being
found by any potential buyers due to the fact
that they have low rankings in search engines.
Egyptian school children similarly might in
theory have access to an enormous amount
of content on the Internet, but if there is no
apparent route to access specific websites
(i.e. they are not indexed in search engines or
listed in directories), the children inevitably
will not visit those sites. Therefore, even when
‘digital divides’ have, in theory, been bridged
(e.g. allowing Thai silk sellers to engage in
e-commerce and Egyptian children access to
educational materials), there can, in practice,
remain fundamental divides brought about by
a simple lack of visibility.
IV Conclusion
There is a widespread assumption that an
information revolution is taking place in con-
temporary society. Economic, cultural and
political interactions and relationships are
increasingly grounded in ICTs and are reliant
on unimpeded flows of information over space.
However, a majority of the world’s population
is being excluded from these new ways of
organizing society (only 22 per cent of Asians

and 11 per cent of Africans have access to the
Internet) (Internet World Stats, 2009). As
a result, many individuals, organizations and
governments have expressed concern and
invested enormous sums of money to eliminate
a perceived ‘digital divide’.
Some of these projects have been highly
effective, and indeed, Internet usage rates in
much of the world are growing rapidly. Yet it
remains that success stories can be difficult to
find. There are too many examples of failed
development projects, computers collecting
dust and websites hidden to all but the most
proficient of searchers. More importantly,
there are too many examples of large amounts
of resources invested into projects designed
under an (almost always incorrect) assumption
that computers and an Internet connection
would be a sufficient investment to bring about
a meaningful amount of co-presence. Within
the contexts of development, resources are
always finite; for every funded project many
others are left unfunded, and it clearly takes
forceful imagery such as the ‘digital divide’,
‘digital apartheid’ and the ‘global village’ to
allow funds to be spent on ICTs rather than
vaccines, water pumps and textbooks.
Nonetheless, as this article has argued,
more nuance is needed if metaphors such as the
‘digital divide’ are to be continued to be used.
An assumption in much of what is written
about the ‘digital divide’ is that both cyberspace
and the divide separating the disconnected
from it are distinct, singular and ontic entities.
Bridging a ‘digital divide’ is often thought to be
a panacea to issues of development: allowing
people and places to move temporally forwards
on a path of development by being closer in
relative space to the sites of the information
revolution.
This article argues that the trope of a
‘digital divide’ should be pluralized, localized
and grounded in more appropriate spatial
frameworks. Because of the nature of virtual
topologies, there can never be a singular divide.
There is no singular floating cyberspace, in
Progress in Development Studies 11, 3 (2011) pp. 211–27
Mark Graham 223
the sense that a person is either inside or
outside, separated by a ‘digital divide’. There
are rather countless small (although often
insurmountable) ‘digital divides’ preventing
movement through the topologies of the Inter-
net and limiting access to cyberspaces.
The consequences of being excluded from
the Internet can in many cases be severe.
People can be left out of networks and flows
of information, thereby reinforcing existing
social, economic and political power struc-
tures. While ICTs cannot alone flatten
structural and social forces of exclusion and
inequality they can, nonetheless, be a powerful
impetus behind positive economic and social
change.
As such, it is important to recognize that
while online access is not a determinant of
participation in the information revolution, it
is a prerequisite. Policymakers should therefore
always employ the ‘digital divide’ metaphor
with caution. Attaining any semblance of
virtual co-presence in order to achieve eco-
nomic, social and political goals involves the
circumvention of not only the material divides
(i.e. the fact that there is a lack of co-presence
between people and information), but also the
myriad divides that obstruct communication
within the networks of the Internet. Because
virtual information and online networks are
not a floating ‘global village’, ‘digital divides’
are consequently contingent on the eco-
nomic, cultural, political and technological
positionalities of each person attempting to
access the Internet.
Acknowledgements
This work benefitted from the support of
a National Science Foundation Doctoral
Dissertation Award and the Association of
American Geographers Dissertation Grant.
I also wish to extend thanks to Professor
Matthew Zook, Professor Tom Leinbach,
Padraig Carmody and the anonymous re-
ferees for their comments and guidance.
224 Time machines and virtual portals
Notes
1. This programme is also known as the Schools and
Libraries Program of the Universal Service Fund.
2. By the time this article goes to press this figure is likely
to greatly underestimate the number of cities with free
wifi access.
3. See Walton (1999) for a more alarmist take on this
thesis.
4. The premise of the sketch is that ‘if the Internet was
a real place, it would be disgusting and intolerable’
(Chapelle, 2004). To prove the point, Chappelle walks
around cyberspace (a fixed and distinct place) which
is populated by other Internet users from around
the world. He is initially looking for a news site, but
ultimately gets waylaid by free music, pornographic
videos of Paris Hilton and doctors selling male herbal
enhancements.
5. See Rye (2008) for complementary findings within the
contexts of the Indonesian education system.
6. Fisher and Unwin (2002) offer an interesting collec-
tion of writing on virtual environments.
7. This statistic was obtained from the article ‘How many
websites are there’ (Anonymous, n.d.) available at
boutell.com.
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