Does IT make the Arts even more elite?.
That information technology makes the arts, humanities and learning more elite/restricted to the privileged few. .
We take the elite or privileged few to mean the high-income OECD Countries.
The Issue .
The issue of this debate centres around the idea of the "digital divide- which describes the fact the world can be divided into people who have the capacity to use modern information technology such as the telephone, television, computers and the internet and those who can't. This is due not only to disparities in wealth but also in disparities of:.
Wealth.
IT Infrastructure.
Education.
Culture.
o (eg. Most Internet content is in English or languages of the OECD nations).
The Argument.
We will show that IT makes the arts more elite because it increases accessibility only to the privileged few.
The Points.
Wealth.
Disparities in wealth have always made the arts more elite because the higher income countries have had more resources to devote to the arts and humanities. This is nothing new it is evident right throughout out history.
o Plato and Aristotle's Schools of Philosophy were only possible due to their empires position of wealth so you can see right throughout history the arts and humanities have been restricted to the privileged elite nations.
In some ways IT can be a cheaper way of accessing information, e.g. the online databases of arts type material (e.g. journals, reviews) this would be much more expensive to collect in hard copy, now that the opportunity of the internet has well established itself there is the future opportunity to give the developing world access to the arts in a relatively cheap way- but it becomes problematic again when you take into account the huge intellectual property charges that still make it unaffordable, especially when you take into account the currency exchange rates.
Accessibility.
Today the wealth divide creates even greater disparities as IT starts to play a larger role in the Arts and humanities.
