Technology and the great refusal: the information age and critical social theory.

On October 18, 2000, the richest man in the world addressed an audience of Silicon Valley's technological elite at the "Creating Digital Dividends" conference. The conference, according to its press release, was "aimed at finding private business solutions to the problem of the global digital divide�� The potential dividends include providing billions of people with access to educational and health ser�vices, boosting incomes and stimulating economic opportunity, and cre�ating the tools to manage natural resources more sustainably. According to one reporter, the conference "revolved around the thesis that technol�ogy can make both entrepreneurs and consumers out of people earning less than $1 a day.