How is technology changing the world landscape? A view over the European continent

Abstract

We are used to look at geographical, economic, political or even religious maps of our planet. Cybernetics, which is a relatively new science that forcedly makes its way through already existing sciences, it is creating its own map. Obviously, despite the young age, its complexity does not permit detailing of each component. This article focuses on the digital divide on the European continent. Starting from an analysis on local communities in Romania from 2010 up till now, the intention to extend the study to the entire region and then to the whole continent did not take long to appear, but unfortunately the complexity and lack of resources are proving to be a great barrier. In spite of this, we analysed at a national level (using a series of criteria proposed by the ECDL Foundation, together with those proposed by UNESCO and adapted according to the literature studied) all European countries, which possess as we know, important similarities and differences related to their political, social, and economic contexts. As a result, we created a map of the level of information technology's adoption amongst population. The research question this study investigates is how contextual features serve to influence the adoption of technology among different countries in Europe – focusing in particular at Romania. Due to the fact that high dispersion of results for indicators within the same country raises many questions, we conclude saying that the success of IT&C projects is to a large extent contingent upon political and economic contexts, while being less related to social contexts. The article also wants to be a scientific debates initiator, whose purpose is to present, in a formal framework: university courses, conferences, seminars, solutions and strategies of increasing the value of the indicators in question.