Is Technological Equality Just A Utopian Vision?

In today’s world, where digital technology has swept every corner of the globe, the concept of “technology equality” is increasingly becoming a focal point in policy debates, corporate slogans, and academic research. It promises an ideal future: that everyone, regardless of geography, race, gender, or economic status, can equally access, use, and benefit from technological progress. However, between this alluring vision and the complex reality lies a chasm constructed by power, capital, and structural circumstances.

Is technology equality truly an achievable future, or a utopian fantasy of the digital age?

Technology equality is far more than just enabling more people to use smartphones or access the internet. It encompasses three interconnected dimensions: equal access (opportunities to access technology and infrastructure), equal capabilities (the skills and literacy required to use technology), and equal outcomes (fairly benefiting from the application of technology). The current global digital ecosystem exhibits significant inequalities across all three dimensions.

The UN’s 2023 Digital Economy Report points out that only 25% of the population in the world’s least developed countries uses the internet, while this figure exceeds 90% in developed countries. This “access gap” is just the tip of the iceberg. Even among those who have internet access, the gaps in digital skills, data access, and participation in digital innovation among different groups are more profound and persistent, forming both a “use gap” and an “innovation gap.”

On this issue, a diverse and even conflicting spectrum of viewpoints has emerged in the international science and technology policy field.

Technological utopianists, such as prominent Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen, believe that “software is eating the world” and that technological diffusion will naturally lead to equality. In a recent article, he declared, “We are on the verge of the greatest egalitarian force in history—artificial intelligence and blockchain will deconstruct traditional power structures.” This view treats technology itself as a neutral solution, underestimating the shaping role of socio-political structures in the application of technology.

In contrast, critical theorists hold a skeptical view. Safia Noble, professor at the London School of Economics, warns in her book The Algorithm of Oppression: “Technologies are not neutral tools; they often reproduce or even reinforce inequalities in society.” Through her research on racial and gender biases in search engines, she reveals how algorithms encode historical discrimination into the digital future. Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz points out from an economic perspective: “The digital platform economy often leads to a ‘winner-takes-all’ market structure, which in turn exacerbates the concentration of income and wealth.”

Policy practitioners are taking a more pragmatic stance. Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s head of digital policy, is a prime example of this approach. In pushing for the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, she made it clear: “Digital markets must be fair and open. Our goal is not to stifle innovation, but to ensure that the benefits of innovation are widely shared.” This regulatory intervention approach attempts to strike a balance between technological innovation and social equity.

SpaceX’s Starlink project promises to provide high-speed internet to remote areas around the world, seemingly representing a promising vision of technology directly addressing access inequality . However, in-depth analysis reveals that the cost of its terminal equipment and monthly service fees far exceed the affordability of low-income groups in many developing countries; the actual service coverage prioritizes profit-driven markets such as North America and Europe; and in some regions, its operation has even raised concerns about “digital neo-colonialism”—relying on foreign companies to provide critical digital infrastructure could undermine national sovereignty and local industrial development.

This case reveals a core paradox of technology equality: profit-driven technology solutions, driven by private capital, often prioritize serving markets with purchasing power rather than those with the most pressing needs.

The move by companies like Meta to open-source large language models (such as the Llama family) is seen as a significant attempt to break the resource monopoly in the AI field and promote the democratization of technology. In theory, open source enables researchers, small businesses, and developing countries to access cutting-edge AI technologies without the need for massive investments in computing resources.

This move has indeed lowered the barriers to AI research and development, spurring innovative experiments worldwide. However, structural inequalities have not disappeared, but rather shifted: the tens of thousands of expensive GPUs needed to train these models remain concentrated in the hands of a few giants; high-quality training data mostly comes from the English-speaking world, replicating or even amplifying cultural biases; and researchers lacking computing resources, while able to use the models, find it difficult to participate in cutting-edge fundamental model innovation.

The open-source movement is an important driving force for technological equality, but it cannot solve the fundamental resource asymmetry caused by the capital-intensive R&D model.

Achieving equal access to technology faces three intertwined obstacles:

Technological and Economic Barriers: The high fixed costs and near-zero marginal costs of digital infrastructure naturally lead to monopolistic or oligopolistic market structures. Some company holds a 92% share of the global search market, and Amazon Web Services controls one-third of the world’s cloud infrastructure. This concentration grants platform companies unprecedented pricing and rule-making power.

Geopolitical Obstacles: Digital technologies have become a core area of great power competition. The United States, China, and the European Union are engaged in fierce competition in cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, while vying for dominance through export controls, investment reviews, and technical standards. This tendency toward “technological nationalism” runs counter to the global cooperation needed for equal access to science and technology.

Sociocultural barriers: Technological design and applications reflect the values and worldviews of their designers. When Silicon Valley’s engineering culture dominates global technological development, the needs of women, minorities, and those in the Global South are easily marginalized. For example, the higher error rate of facial recognition technology on people with darker skin is a concrete manifestation of this bias.

Despite the numerous obstacles, it would be equally one-sided to completely deny the possibility of equal access to technology. Some practices demonstrate that, under specific conditions and with appropriate intervention, technology can serve as a tool to promote equality:

Public Digital Infrastructure: Estonia’s “Digital Republic” model demonstrates the possibility of government-led development of inclusive digital public goods. The country considers digital access a fundamental right of citizens and, through legal guarantees, digital education, and the construction of public platforms, has ensured that digital services cover 99% of public services.

Regulatory Innovation: The EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act innovatively distinguish between “gatekeeper” platforms and ordinary companies, imposing special obligations on the former, including data portability, service interoperability, and fair access conditions, in an attempt to reshape the digital power structure at the rule level.

Community-Led Technology Design: In Kerala , India , a fisheries information system designed with the participation of the fishing community provides market price and weather information via a low-cost mobile network, significantly increasing the income of small-scale fishermen. This “participatory design” ensures that technology truly serves the specific needs of marginalized groups.

“Technological equality will not be achieved automatically with technological progress, but it is not an unattainable utopia either. It is best understood as an ongoing struggle for equitable distribution of benefits throughout the course of technological development.” – RulerHub

The core contradiction in this struggle lies in the fact that technology itself possesses the potential for democratization, yet its development is constrained by unequal economic structures and power relations. Therefore, the future of technological equality does not depend on a single technological breakthrough or policy solution, but rather on establishing a new governance framework that guides technological innovation to serve the public good, ensures democratic accountability for digital power, and places marginalized groups at the center of technological design.

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