Connecting the Digital Underclass

Abstract

This chapter focuses on digital equity by arguing that it is a new civic right that is increasingly vital in our hyper-connected societies which must be promoted and protected. Digital equity is necessary for political and cultural participation, employment, lifelong learning and access to essential services. However, we need to expand this notion provided by "The National Digital Inclusion Alliance" and look beyond the traditional digital inequalities and include the new forms of inequalities arising with the advent of algorithms. If we want to promote a truly digitally inclusive society, we should be able to address not only the uneven access to and use of ICTs, but also the unequal treatment deriving from AI and algorithms. Keywords Digital rights • Tackling digital inequalities • Digital equity • Digital inclusion • Digital skills In the previous two chapters we have discussed about the rise of the digital underclass in relation to both traditional digital inequalities (digital divide) and new forms of digital inequalities (algorithms inequalities). By living at the boundary of the digital society, the digital underclass neither exploits the benefits and potentialities offered by digital technologies, because they are (digitally) invisible, nor gets advantages from the algorithmization and the datafication of digital society, because they are (digitally) discriminated.