No they won't. They'll have exactly as much access as the upper class allows them to have. The only reason they've enjoyed greater access in the past is because there's been zero political pressure to throttle that access and a whole lot of market incentive to allow it.
The moment that access becomes inconvenient for the existing power structure -- and it will, sooner or later -- then along come government regulations and social campaigns specifically aimed at limiting access to those technologies for whatever excuse TPTB can think of.
Incorrect. MONEY rules over all... at least at the moment, and their desire to keep it that way is the main reason why service providers universally oppose Net Neutrality.
This assumes everything will be exactly as it is now, and as we have seen, this is exactly how it will NOT be.
"As we have seen?" That paradigm has persisted for three thousand years now: the existing power structure goes out of its way to shape the social/political/legal landscape to its own advantage. The only thing that ever changes is the identities of the people in charge.
Actually "The world is being brought out of poverty" is the popular belief lately. Interestingly, it's a belief that is not shared by the inhabitants of poor countries.
What you're describing, actually, is the doctrine of "globalism," which is the belief that poverty -- at least on a national scale -- results from a lack of opportunity to compete in a global marketplace, and that increased technology and open-trade policies will make competitive markets available to those poor workers for the first time. The idea being that peasant farmers in China wouldn't still be peasants if Ford opened a car factory down the road and hired them to work in it.
In practice, globalism doesn't so much raise the standard of living for poor countries as much as dramatically lowers it for everyone else. When working-class families in New York are competing with Chinese peasants over a manufacturing job, the New Yorkers find themselves outclassed by the latters' willingness to work for next to nothing, plus China's suspicious lack of enforcement of child labor laws. IOW, it doesn't raise the entire world out of poverty, it just sets everyone on an equal playing field where poverty can be used as a competitive advantage.
With economic influence equal and info tech availability widespread
That's just it: "economic influence" really boils down to money. Specifically, the value of the commodities you control and the resources you consume, and what price you set for those commodities on the market. A country whose economy consists mainly of sweatshops making car parts for GM doesn't have a lot of economic influence, unless their workers unionize and go on strike for a better deal. In a globalist economy, that is economic suicide: the workers go on strike, GM has a billion potential scabs it can fly in from the slums of Indonesia to take those jobs.
Tech availability also boils down to money. 40% of the human race lives on an income of less than $700 a year, and another 20% live on about half of that. The only way that technology is going to become widely available is if people go out of their way to distribute it for the sake of the poor themselves (like the One Laptop Per Child program) and even that requires the direct cooperation of governments and NGOs to be economically viable. If and when those programs become TOO successful -- when the technology uplifts the population to the point of being able to overturn the existing power structure in their countries -- that cooperation turns into opposition. That much has ALREADY happened; witness the censorship and technology restrictions in some of the more autocratic regimes, notably Saudi Arabia and China.
The widespread distribution you're talking about will be a symptom of an economic/political revolution, but it will NOT be its cause; history shows that it virtually never is.
this type of class control will be virtually nil. At this point, there is already nothing they can do about it.
At this point, they're ALREADY doing quite a bit about it and they've been very successful so far, especially where "send in the army, shoot anyone who complains" is still a viable tactic of control. iPads, AFAIK, aren't bulletproof, and the ability of Sunni Iraqis to buy one isn't going to make much difference if the government decides to put them down hard.
