A convergence of interests. This is just the beginning of the so-called digital revolution. As at the beginning of former technical revolutions, only a very small percentage of human kind benefits: the digital divide.

Modern communication technologies may provide some freedom of expression and the opportunity to receive and spread information, whether in favour or against a political system.

They also help construct a global market and arouse dreams of a capitalism without frictions. Of a perfect world, where everybody receives and nobody pays.

"History shows that the countries which fail to take advantage of the opportunities offered by these new technologies in the fields of information, electronic data processing and telecommunications will inevitably suffer slower development and decreased power of `negotiation´ in the new global communications landscape." (UNESCO, World Communication Report 1998)

The "The Haves" of the digital world tend to be concentrated in the centers of the North, the "Have-nots" in the peripheries of the South. But the gap between periphery and centre exists not only between nations or continents. It emerges within the centres of high technology, too.

Those "falling through the net" (title of a study by the U.S. Department of Commerce, 1999) lack education as well as health care or opportunities for electronic communication.

Information dreams and economic realities. But is access to information technologies a primary necessity? Beyond the dreams of a world perfected by information, crude realities remain untouched. The world's income gap keeps on growing and the economic divide widening.

The richest fifth of mankind : the poorest fifth = 74 :1