Abstract

As the internet and other digital technologies become ncreasingly massified, concerns about exclusion and the digital divide needs to go beyond the physical access/not access dichotomy, because it does not take into account the complexities involved on how and why technology is appropriated and integrated by persons to their everyday life and, ultimately, to enhance human welfare. Even the definition of the so-called decisional divide, which separates those who want technology from those who reject it does not necessarily account for the reasons, attitudes, fears or pressures behind this decision, which can change along time as well. This study wants to contribute to clarify this problem by exploring in depth how a specific, yet significant segment of population from two countries which lead ICT diffusion in their respective region, the UK and Chile, feels more or less integrated to technology, and what the motivators and obstacles, real or imaginary, they face. Perceptions of usefulness and purpose within a complex network of social ties are therefore key to understand the phenomenon. Theoretically we assume technological engagement is related to engagement to social networks. We start by analysing secondary quantitative and institutional sources to compare and situate these two countries within the international context of socio-economic and technological development, and then we discuss the qualitative findings drawn from group discussions conducted in London and Santiago de Chile in the last months of 2009 and early 2010. Middle and lower-middle class parents of children attending school and/or college were selected since they lived in environments where ICTs were widely used and therefore the pressure to use them was likely to be high. Furthermore, they constituted that grey area of digital inclusion/exclusion because they were neither too rich nor too poor, nor too old nor to young. We found that in both countries weaker social networks did seem to lead to less extensive engagement with ICTs, among other similarities. At the same time, there were important country differences. Some of them can be related to different development levels while others seemed more cultural, yet it became clear that socio-economic and development indicators are neither the only nor the best explanations of what goes on in the long tail of digital exclusion where people are somewhat but definitely not totally engaging with ICTs.