The term "Digital Divide" hangs around us like the the threat of exam failure - it is used to repeatedly point out that computers, technology and on-line communications are not the panacea to social incohesion we would love them to be. It reminds us that there are people who don't have access to the technology, and so if we put out all daily procedures on-line, we are effectively barring a relatively large number of people from being able to live equally.

However, is it actively dangerous to think about the world in this way? Do we, by imagining this discrete separation between demographics, discourage ourselves from thinking imaginatively about how the world around us works?

I think it may be better to perceive the "connectedness" of society not as an on-line and an off-line separation, but by considering everything (or everyone) to be linked somehow, but for these links to be weaker or stronger according to the communication channel used. In this way, it is like having a layered set of small worlds, each one taking the different communication methods into account.

Why is this different? Why is it important? Because then it is much easier to work out not how to "get the world on-line", but how best to provide strong links in place of weak ones from one group to another. In other words, the problem shifts subtley from getting everyone on-line, to making sure that the communication taking place on-line can be disseminated out to off-line groups easily. It is about enforcing and encouraging the inter-group flow.

Why does this make more sense? Because I think it is a mistake to believe that the electronic links established over the last few years are the most efficient for all given purposes, especially in a phase of such transition. To believe that we should all communicate over IP in preference to other, more traditional communication channels, is detrimental to the vision of an inclusive world that many of us want.

As an example, it would not make sense to insist that everyone must use the telephone at all times, rather than speak face-to-face to each other. It wouldn't make sense to write things down on paper when in the same room either. Similarly, as it stands, there are more efficient routes of communciation within the social groups we are currently clamouring to get on-line, and what we could be concentrating on is getting information from one sphere into a single point of that group, where it can spread more naturally via other means.

This is the bigger picture that opens up, and requires more thinking than merely how best to organise social networks on-line. We need transcendental cohesiveness. Policies that truly bridge, rather than attempt to gather everyone under the same umbrella. And many of the answers will be personal, not technical.

Real World examples:

• |!Simputer| - acts as a single link to a town/village, giving everyone their own storage device if necessary (at least, that was the original plan)
• |!On-StreetTerminalsInKingston|
• Local mailing list -> local newsletters for Spanish/Somalian quarters in Minnesota
• Marina community sending representative to council meetings? (non-technical example)