The Virtual Wasteland

The digital revolution is accompanied by optimistic publicity that stresses theadvantages of technological progress. Filmmakers Harrison and Klein, though, are notconvinced of its positive effects. In the virtual wasteland they unravel the realitybehind the rhetoric. They discard the assumption that the digital revolution heralds anew social system as pretentious nonsense. They consider the polarisation of richand poor as the greatest danger of the information technology. To illustrate this viewthey compare Singapore, the technologically most advanced society in the world, withthe Philippines, where the majority of the population lives in great poverty. But also incities like London and New York they find a growing gap between rich and poorpeople. So their conclusion is that technological progress will not alter the relationshipbetween the two groups.