Since the dawn of civilization, humankind has sought to gain dominion over nature. Historically, the spoils of that conquest have been unevenly distributed and exponentially disrupted, often to the great detriment of the majority of people inhabiting the earth. The mastery of technology appears to be paramount in determining who prospers and who languishes. In the last several decades, the culture of technology has become so pervasive that it is increasingly difficult to make a distinction between someone’s character and what that person has. It is not surprising, then, that many people feel that the forces of technology are so interwoven with cultural forces that not only will they inflict more and more of their injustice and their grubby commerce on the lives of the people, but they will also ever more restrict the forms of interaction that can legitimately figure in the creation of common bonds. A question that can be asked in a culturally diverse society is what role cultural factors, including religion, play in various societies’ definitions and responses to socially crucial technological problems. Various moral, political, cultural, and economic commitments are expressed in and through technology. What we make and how we make it visibly shows what we value. Societies have the technologies they can afford or are willing to invest in. Schools in affluent neighborhoods have computers, while those in poorer schools do not. Similarly, individuals use what their income will allow. As technology offers an increasing number of apparent necessities or near necessities, the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” widens, and technology has thus given rise to the inclusively sustainable “Digital Divide.”

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Digital Divide and Environmental Justice: Religious Responses to Urban Technology

  • Wasswa Shafik

摘要

Since the dawn of civilization, humankind has sought to gain dominion over nature. Historically, the spoils of that conquest have been unevenly distributed and exponentially disrupted, often to the great detriment of the majority of people inhabiting the earth. The mastery of technology appears to be paramount in determining who prospers and who languishes. In the last several decades, the culture of technology has become so pervasive that it is increasingly difficult to make a distinction between someone’s character and what that person has. It is not surprising, then, that many people feel that the forces of technology are so interwoven with cultural forces that not only will they inflict more and more of their injustice and their grubby commerce on the lives of the people, but they will also ever more restrict the forms of interaction that can legitimately figure in the creation of common bonds. A question that can be asked in a culturally diverse society is what role cultural factors, including religion, play in various societies’ definitions and responses to socially crucial technological problems. Various moral, political, cultural, and economic commitments are expressed in and through technology. What we make and how we make it visibly shows what we value. Societies have the technologies they can afford or are willing to invest in. Schools in affluent neighborhoods have computers, while those in poorer schools do not. Similarly, individuals use what their income will allow. As technology offers an increasing number of apparent necessities or near necessities, the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” widens, and technology has thus given rise to the inclusively sustainable “Digital Divide.”