The computer and Internet as strategy of social inclusion in the imaginary of the poor persons

Abstract

Computers and the Internet constitute a part of the popular imaginary, even though the majority does not possess them. Thus, this imaginary is beginning to incorporate the subjective necessity of using the new technologies but from a position where access is objectively prohibited. The new imaginary generates desires, expectations, and aspirations from a position of generalized dispossession, which not only promotes myth-making about origins and possibilities but also fears and anxieties concerning how the computer may come to constitute one more factor of social exclusion. My research has the objective of inquiring into these diverse representations in the popular imaginary as a way of demonstrating how inequalities areconstructed in the symbolic appropriation of the new technologies.

Keywords

• exclusión social
• tecnologías de la información y la comunicación
• fractura digital