Print Divide, Digital Divide

 In any information society, the Matthew Effect creates winners and losers. A ‘digital divide’ separates today’s information society into those with the tools and skills needed to participate in the ‘knowledge economy’ and an unfortunate minority who lack them (van Dijk). Burke points out, however, that such a gap has always existed, usually in the form of traditional class divisions between middle and upper classes and a large lower class of manual or agricultural laborers. Modern anxiety over this divide has a historical precedent in the many ‘learned societies’ that sprung up during and after the Enlightenment period. These were organizations devoted to propagating, usually through cheap pamphlets, news scientific or technical advancements that might inform and enliven the masses (Burke). The National Geographic Magazine and Society is a modern example, although at its founding in 1888 it would have been a perky upstart among older, less-fashionable societies: the movement began to lose momentum in the Industrial Revolution.

Taking up the slack were mechanics’ institutes, dedicated to educating the working class.  In her study Foot in the Door, Mouse in Hand: Low-income women, short-term job-training programs, and IT careers, Karen Chapple researches the success rates of nonprofits that train non-degree students in the basics of computer use. The educational programs she studies, and the people, are mirrored in Burke’s descriptions of mechanics’ schools, night schools and societies for ‘useful’ knowledge. Both modern IT training schools and past mechanics’ schools sought to teach practical skills to intellectually-marginalized people.  

The More Things Change...

This is the Social History of Knowledge’s real value: as with any history, we are better-equipped to see continuity in our surroundings, which tempers our over-enthused or doomsayer reactions with an appropriate amount of perspective. Perhaps Chapple might have augmented her study by reviewing the literature on mechanics’ institutes from the Industrial Revolution; maybe van Dijk’s conclusions about the elites in a networked society would have been different if he had looked at the problem through a postcolonial lens. Although Burke says little of Wikipedia or the rest of the Internet, his book makes clear that he doesn’t need to--it’s all been said before.