ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the extent to which new digital technologies offer new opportunities to improve people's social lives. It focuses on the opportunities to improve the life quality of citizens/users offered by information communication technologies (ICTs) and these opportunities' links to pre-existing forms of social stratification. The chapter examines the concept of life chances as presented by Weber and further explained by Giddens. It explores the reciprocal effects that social and digital inequalities have on each other, emphasizing once again that digital inequalities tend to reinforce the social inequalities upon which they are based. Current society can be represented as a digital network in which some of the most important human and social activities occur, and exclusion from or limited access to the digital realm become a major source of social inequality. Those who have greater digital capital are more likely to convert their use of the Internet into economic, social, cultural, personal and political capitals.
