Challenges for digital inclusion in Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to highlight some of the main limits and possibilities that should conduct public policies for digital inclusion in Brazil. In the first part of the article, we show that the appearance of the new Information and Communication Technologies has been increasing the asymmetries and exclusion that characterize the present process of economic globalization. In the second part, we describe the huge economic and social inequality in Brazil, which is also expressed as a remarkable digital divide. The third part of the paper highlights the limits and possibilities involved in the elaboration of public policies for digital inclusion in Brazil, considering not only the social and the economic peculiarities analyzed previously in the article, but also the specificities of the technology involved in these policies to attenuate the digital divide.