ABSTRACT
In March 2005, the United Nations inaugurated a long-awaited programme, a ‘Digital Solidarity Fund’, to underwrite initiatives that address ‘the uneven distribution and use of new information and communication technologies’ and ‘enable excluded people and countries to enter the new era of the information society’ (‘From the Digital Divide . . .’, 2005).1 What this might mean in practice – which digital technologies might make a significant difference and for whom and with what resources – is still an open and contentious question. Debates about plans for the Fund at the first meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in December 2003 are symptomatic of the complexity of ‘digital divide’ issues that have also been central to the second phase of the information summit, held in November 2005 in Tunisia.2
