Digital Divide: Inequality and Alienation on the Era of Digital Democracy

Digital technology revolution is changing the future of the world. Although digital technology has reduced the barriers of time and distance, at the same time it also producing the so-called “digital divide,” which is another form of inequality. There are two levels of the digital divide; the first level is the lack of access to IT and the second level is inequality in the utilization of these technologies. This paper analyzes various forms of the digital divide, especially from the aspect of socio-demographic variables and their impact on democracy and politics in the era of mass society. A literature review shows that digital technology is changing the democracy and its study; internet use for politics is also not equal depending on skills and motivational factors; and its affects how religious communities change their perceptions regarding the use of the Internet and negotiate the discrepancy between their needs and its advantages.Technological alienation comes to be an increasingly dominant description of capitalist society as a whole. In technological alienation, human beings are not only dominated by the commodities they produce, but also by their instruments of production, including digital technology (Internet).

Keywords: Digital Divide, Democracy, Inequality, Alienation, Technophobia, Technophilia

Rethinking Community: Places, Rituals, and Social Relations

“Community” is a word that pleasant to be felt. For myself, there is a good feeling, sense, and imagination when hearing community. I feel like being part of something that completes me as a human being. Hearing these words may bring our imagination on things that are interesting in our lives, such as the place where we were born, the family where we grew up, the school where we meet playmates, a religion in which we hold, and to the work that we enjoy being surrounded by peoples that have in common with us. This word brings us to the places and people with all the different routine and ritual. Our relationship with the place, people, and environment subsequently continue to shape our identity today and in the future.

A.  Community, Place, and Technology

Communities often refer to the group of people in a particular place. For example, people who live in a small town, rural, urban, churches, mosques, schools and places in other physical association. The shared sense of place involves relationships with people, culture, and environment (Flora, 2016:14). The sense of community that inherent to the place defined by some sociologists, such as Robert Park, Earnest Burgess, Roderick McKenzie, and Louis Wirth from the Chicago School of Social Ecology. Their early work, which was published in 1925, examines the urban settlement of the City of Chicago. They provided the simplest possible description of a community as a collection of people occupying a more or less clearly defined area, but a community is more than that. A community is not only a collection of people, but it is a collective of institutions. Not people, but institutions, are final and decisive in distinguishing the community from other social constellations (Halsall, 2014:93).  

Observing Social Life in the Small Town Midwest

Julianne Couch Book’s Review (2016)

“Where do you live?” and “how long you have lived here?” are the two questions for establishing one’s local community status. Responses are often dichotomized as those of newcomer versus native (hunter, 2014:85-99). Studying our hometown, like Julianne’s book, may give a researcher some benefits; familiarity, empathy, trust, access, and legitimation. In her books, she tried to describe how to make a living life in the small town Midwest which has psychological and sociological ties with her personal life. She often moved from one city to the other in the Midwest area for the reasons of family and work, so she called herself comes from “Wyo-wA,” that mean, “Wyoming-Iowa.” Familiarity makes the author’s insider knowledge led to both understanding and deeper access to the community.

Observation and interview conducted by Julianne into every small town belonging to the category of the frontier and remote (FAR) in her book have found many interesting things. Although all of this small town with a population fewer than 4,000 people was look similar, infact, they have specific problems which differ from one another. There is a small town which suddenly being depopulated due to the closure of industry and college which was experienced by Tarkio, a small town in the Missouri. There is a small town that has so many natural amenities but unincorporated and isolated like Centennial in Wyoming or Knox County in Nebraska. There is also a small town that has a relatively vibrant rural life like two small towns along the Mississippi River: Bellevue, with their vibrant tourism in Iowa and New Madrid, with their ethnicity diverse and fascinating geological history in Missouri.