The class struggle has gone digital – New Technology

CHRONICLE. The network would give everyone access to information anywhere, direct democracy is becoming a matter of course. So it went in the late 1990s – the same thoughts have become common again with the new digitization wave.

     Sverker Brundin.

     The class struggle is over or it continues in the digital world?

But when I will invite children to my daughter 7 birthday party, I can not be sure that parents have an email address. All have actually not even a mobile number.

Since I am a hard curious person – I’m a journalist – googling I part parents. The idea that the digital presence differs between different groups in society becomes even clearer.

If you are academics with a reasonably well paid Jobs – typläsaren of this magazine – are you likely to find a googling and it certainly has an updated LinkedIn profile. You have left digital trail behind you – in social media, blogs, mailing lists, forum posts, recreational activities and more. But large groups of society are not included. No information is more than maybe a phone number in a directory service. Not that these people especially cherish their privacy – but only because they are not active on the Internet.

Since I almost exclusively concern me in the nätaktiva circles where people like me are well educated with pretty good job – it becomes almost a shock to realize that there exists a digital divide linked to the Marxist 1800-century concept of “class”.

Swedes and the Internet 2014 shows that the use of the internet in the Swedish population is increasing. At the same time, the higher education you have, the more important do you think the Internet is in everyday life, even more so in the workplace.

Martin Danielsson , a researcher at the School of Health and Society at the University of Halmstad, confirms in a doctoral thesis from last fall that there is a big difference in how the Internet is used depending on which class you belong to.

In modern society, I believe that many have ceased to define themselves as” working class “,” middle class “or” upper class “. But Martin Danielsson writes in the thesis that the class is still relevant in explaining how different social groups relate to the social, cultural consumption, and travel habits. He defines the new class notions of “culturally affluent” (skilled), “the aspiring” (experience in higher education) and “the cultural capital weak” (no experience of higher education).

De later engaged in such mainly devoted to computer games and have an interest in the technology itself rather than what technology can be used for. The cultural capital, strong guys in the thesis looks to a greater extent the technology as a tool.

There are also big differences in how boys from the different groups participating in, for example, the digital public debate.

Ultimately, the phenomenon of a democracy problem. If we are in the accelerating digital world requires that customers and citizens to use digital services – everything from paying their bills to obtain information about the outside world – then we risk to amplify very real social and cultural differences.