Proceedings of the First International Conference on Information and Management Sciences (IMS2002), Xi'An , China. Internet and the Digital Divide Ricardo Salim Koussa Cautus Networks Corporation, USA Carlos Ferrán-Urdaneta Rochester Institute of Technology Abstract: The Internet provides less benefit to the underdeveloped countries than to the developed ones. This holds true even when network access is similar in both countries. We argue that network access is not enough to reap full benefit from the Internet; therefore, simple universal access to the Internet in underdeveloped countries is not enough to close the breach of the Digital Divide. Keyword: Internet, Digital Divide, Pragmatic information, Semantic information, Information sciences Agriculture, industrialization, and informatization revolutions are with no doubt historical productivity landmarks. Tribes and societies can be divided based on the fact that they have or have not accomplished each of those landmarks. We still can find a few tribes that never learned agriculture; tribes merely dedicated to hunting and gathering. Some of these tribes can still be found deep into the Amazon. Their productivity barely covers the basic alimentary needs of the individual and that of their young children. On the other hand, the productivity of agricultural tribes covers the requirements of more children, for a longer period of time, and that of a few relatives that cannot work due to their old age or other physical impediments. And in some cases, it even extends to cover the necessities of another class of people or cast among those tribes that instead of physically working in the field they dedicate themselves to intellectual work. Intellectual work (observations, research, planning, and leadership) that derives in higher levels of overall productivity from those doing the physical labor. Industrialized societies increased their overall productivity by several orders of magnitude in comparison to agricultural ones [16]. Societies that are now undergoing the information revolution are advancing yet at even higher orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, with those great leaps accomplished by a few societies, the breach between them and those that have not yet accomplished the prior stages is becoming larger and larger. A breach that is not only limited to productivity but also to culture and forms of social organization [3, 4]. The breach or division between the societies that are involved in the accelerated process of informatization and those who are left behind in inferior stages of productivity is what we call the digital divide [2]. This divide is replacing the current division between the so called industrialized and not industrialized countries which had in turn replaced the breach between the developed and the underdeveloped countries. Unfortunately countries have tended to stay in the same side of the breach no matter the name. In one side we tend to find the rich countries and on the other the poor ones. But the problem is that the breach has increased through time. In 1820 the distance was 3 to 1; in 1913 11 to 1, in 1950 35 to 1, in 1973 44 to 1, and in 1992 72 to 1 [17]. There was a time when power was obtained by having the required natural resources. Then that changed to having the means to exploit those natural resources. Later those instruments evolved and the requirement was having industrialized means of production. In today’s information society the most important assets are no longer material or energetic assets; not even the industrialized means of production. Today’s valued assets are informational. Those who have the information, the patents, and the means to process and distribute them are the ones that hold the power [10]. Today’s historians are continuously perplexed by the fact that year after year –and in some cases in considerably shorter periods of time- informatization standards are accomplished and soon become obsolete. New informatization goals are set and accomplished yearly by the top industrialized countries while the rest do not seem to even get started. A decade ago the Internet was a technology reserved for the experts on the field; today, the experts are lost inside the great masses of children, elders, and professionals who use the Internet on a daily basis. During the 90’s the WorldWideWeb (WWW) connected the world together (or at least a major part of it). In 2000 the last country still missing, Eritrea, joined the rest of the world in hyperspace [9]. Since then, a large part of the population of industrialized nations and the elite from the not so developed countries have been connected together. They have been connected to chat, to exchange information, and to give instructions to one another. It has been not more than 3 years since the speculative boom of the dot-com ended but it seems as it was very long ago when a nobody could simply have an idea to build an Internet company and tens of venture capitalists would line-up