Digital divide

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The digital divide is the gap between those with regular, effective access to digital technologies and those without. The term digital divide refers to those who can benefit from it, and those who don't, as opposed to just talking about who has direct access to technology, and those who don't. The digital divide is not a clear single gap that divides a society into two groups. Researchers report that disadvantages can take such forms as lower-performance computers, lower-quality or high-priced connections (i.e. narrowband or dialup connections), difficulty in obtaining of the Internet and technological advances in developing economies. Many people can get low cost access in local Internet Cafes, but the evidence still suggest that people are much more likely to make regular use of an Internet connection at home than anywhere else.[1] Today the discussion is moving from the technologies themselves to skills and literacy. Training people in computer skills entails teaching them to read and write first and then how to search and use information effectively but regular practice and the access to practice will still be a limiting factor.

Another key dimension of the Digital Divide is the global digital divide, reflecting existing economic divisions in the world. This global digital divide widens the gap in economic divisions around the world. Countries with a wide availability of internet access can advance the economics of that country on a local and global scale. In today's society, jobs and education are directly related to the internet. In countries where the internet and other technologies are not accessible, education is suffering, and uneducated people cannot compete in our global economy. This leads to poor countries suffering greater economic downfall and richer countries advancing their education and economy. The digital divide is a term used to refer to the gap between people who have access to the internet and those that do not. It can also refer to the skills people have – the divide between people who are at ease using technology to access and analyse information and those who are not.

Contents

[edit] Digital Divide and Effective Use - Some Background

Note: This section is focused on the family as a unit

Traditional conceptualizations of the digital divide talk about the phenomena as a problem of physical access, and primarily focus on issues of physical access. Typical questions include:

  • Do people have access to computers?
  • Do they have the infrastructure needed to support the use of computers such as electricity and internet connections?

On one level, these questions of physical access are of vital importance, because basic physical infrastructure is necessary for any use of computing resources. However, a simple binary assessment of access vs. no access does not begin to paint the whole picture of what it means to have physical access. First, even if a person or family has access to the internet, where are the computers which they can use? Are they at work, at home, at a friend's house, at a library, at an internet cafe, or someplace else? If the computers are only at work, then the parent may have the opportunity to develop technical literacy, but the children will not. If they have to go to a library to get access, then transportation issues become involved. How do they get to the library? How far away is the library? If they have to take a bus, how often do they have the time and money to take the trip to go to the library to access the computers? And how long will they actually be able to use the computers? Will they be able to do anything meaningful with that amount of time?

On the flip side of the coin, if the computers are at home (Gurstein 2003):

  • Do people have an internet connection at home, can they afford one?
  • What speed is their connection?
  • Is it reliable, or patchy?
  • If it is dial-up, then can they download the files they need, or does it take too long/freeze up in the middle of the download?
  • If they can download the files, do they have the programs they need to be able to read the files?
  • If not, how much do those programs cost (MS Office is expensive)?
  • Or if the programs are free, how large are they--maybe the programs are too large to effectively download, and so they still cannot read the files (a problem with many free programs, such as Adobe Reader).
  • Also, what mechanisms might they have to overcome these barriers?
  • If a friend has a copy of MS Office, maybe they can burn a copy and install it on their own computer. But then what are the legal ramifications of these actions if they get caught?
  • Is it worth the risk?

Computers and internet access through computers are not the only technologies that can be important. Phone access is very important, including both land-lines and cell phones. And this can be affected by disasters as well. For example, a year after Hurricane Katrina, in most places in New Orleans, land line access was still not an option, and for a long time after the storm, many cell towers were down. And if a person lost their phone or their charger, or one of them breaks, the mail was so unreliable that it sometimes took weeks before they get a new one, even if the company sent it 2-day priority mail.

Physical access is not the whole story, however. For a person to use the access they have, they need to have the knowledge of how to use the technology effectively. A person who has never used a computer before has many skills they need to develop, including how to type, how to use the mouse, how to open and run programs, what a file is and how to access one, etc. Even a person who uses a computer daily for their work, however, may not be skilled in general use of computers. Technological literacy is not a one-dimensional construct. People tend to be highly skilled users of programs and functions they need to use, and may be completely unaware of or lack the knowledge needed to use other programs and functions which a more general user might consider to be easy, straightforward, or obvious. For example, it is a common phenomena to find secretaries who can write complex macros in MS Word and MS Excel, and use advanced features of MS Outlook, but have no concept of a file or a file system, and be uncomfortable browsing the web for information. And similar specializations exist for people whose jobs require different skills, such as data entry, or even IT Technical Support (Cooper 2004).

Requisite knowledge is not limited to technical knowledge, however. There are also cultural and socio-economic issues involved. One of the biggest barriers to breaking out of generational poverty is a lack of knowledge of the hidden rules of the middle class. However, most schools and workplaces run based on those hidden rules. Students and employees are judged based on their knowledge of these hidden rules, and policies and procedures are designed based on an assumption that the people whom they affect have knowledge of those hidden rules, and thus that knowledge is vital for successful navigation of the policies and procedures. For example, consider parents moving back to New Orleans after Katrina and trying to enroll their children in school. Knowledge of hidden rules may come into play on two levels. First, there may be hidden rules incorporated into the enrollment process. For example, one of the hidden rules of the middle class is that parents are expected to be pro-active regarding their children's education. Another is that people know how to navigate bureaucracy, in that they know where to go to find the forms, procedures, contact information they need. A third hidden rule is that people are expected to be self-sufficient (Payne 1996). Thus, contact information, procedures, etc., may not be made explicit or easily accessible because administrators expect the parents to search until they find them, and because they expect parents to already know where to look to start their search. Thus, while this may work for a middle class parent who is not going to ask someone for help, but instead do a search online to find the information, it may not work for a parent in poverty, whose first action is to tap a social network for the same information. If the information of where to look is never distributed to that parent's social network, that parent may not ever find out what the proper procedure is.

Language can be another major barrier. While lack of knowledge of English clearly can be a problem, the language barrier can take more subtle forms. To continue the above example, school documents, web-pages, etc., are all written in the formal register of English. Middle class people often converse at home, or at least on a daily basis, in the formal register. Thus, reading and understanding the forms or webpages is not usually a problem. However, many people in generational poverty have little or no access to the formal register, and thus may be unable to understand properly what is written in those documents or webpages (Payne 1996).

From the above discussions, it is clear that access issues are very important. Yet, the access problematization of the digital divide is a fundamentally passive view of technology use; a view in which technology exists for the masses to consume, but for an elite to produce. Technology can also be viewed as a democratic resource, where the goal is for everybody to be able to and comfortable with serving in the role as a producer, when it is appropriate to their needs and interests. In this view, people using the technology also see it as a means for facilitating problem solving, rather than just something to consume. In essence the goal is to create a meaningful sense of ownership, by constructing the technology from a perspective of effective use; i.e., how can the technological environment be constructed so that it serves the needs and purposes of the people using it, as opposed to simply reflecting the needs of the people with more power (Gurstein 1999).

References
  • Cooper, Alan (2004). The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. SAMS: Indianapolis, IN.
  • Gurstein, Michael (2003). Effective Use: A community informatics strategy beyond the Digital Divide. First Monday, 8(12). Retrieved from: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/gurstein/index.html on 05/25/2006.
  • Payne, Ruby K. (1996). A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Third Revised Edition. aha! Process, Inc.: Highlands, TX.

[edit] Related Issues

Other issues include the following:

  • gender issues
  • disability issues
  • role of language
  • cultural inequality regarding the content available on the World Wide Web
  • the role of educators in reducing the digital divide in the classroom

The United Nations is aiming to raise awareness of the divide by way of the World Information Society Day which takes place yearly on May 17.

[edit] National interest and social benefit

There are a variety of arguments about why closing the digital divide is important. The major arguments are as follows:

  1. Economic equality: Some think that access to the Internet is a basic component of civil life that some developed countries aim to guarantee for their citizens. Telephone service is often considered important for the reasons of security. Health, criminal, and other types of emergencies may indeed be handled better if the person in trouble has access to a telephone. Also important seems to be the fact that much vital information for education, career, civic life, safety, etc. is increasingly provided via the Internet, especially on the web. Even social welfare services are sometimes administered and offered electronically.
  2. Social mobility: If computers and computer networks play an increasingly important role in continued learning and career advancement, then education should integrate technology in a meaningful way to better prepare students. Without such offerings, the existing digital divide disfavors children of lower socio-economic status, particularly in light of research showing that schools serving these students in the USA usually utilize technology for remediation and skills drilling due to poor performance on standardized tests rather than for more imaginative and educationally demanding applications.
  3. Social equality: As education integrate technology, Societies such as in the developing world should also integrate technology to improve life. This will reduce the gender inequalities. Access to information through internet and other communication tools will improve her life chances and enable her to compete globally with her Contemporaries even in the comfort of her rural settings.
  4. Democracy: Use of the Internet has implications for democracy. This varies from simple abilities to search and access government information to more ambitious visions of increased public participation in elections and decision making processes. Direct participation (Athenian democracy) is sometimes referred to in this context as a model.
  5. Economic competitiveness and growth: The development of information infrastructure and active use of it is inextricably linked to economic growth. Information technologies in general tend to be associated with productivity improvements even though this can be debatable in some circumstances. The exploitation of the latest technologies is widely believed to be a source of competitive advantage and the technology industries themselves provide economic benefits to the usually highly educated populations that support them. The broad goal of developing the information economy involves some form of policies addressing the digital divide in many countries with an increasingly greater portion of the domestic labor force working in information industries.
  6. National Security: It has been speculated that the Digital Divide leaves those most susceptible to terrorism with no other options. Because they are being left behind, they rebel against modern society through acts of terrorism (www.digitaldivide.org).

[edit] Digital divide in the context of e-democracy

The theoretical concepts of e-democracy are still in early development but in practice 'blogs (web logs), Wikis and mailing lists are having significant effects in broadening the way democracy operates. There is no consensus among scholars, about the possible outcomes of this revolution in the realm of state operations. One of the main problems associated with the digital divide and liberal democracy, is linked to the capacity to participate in e-government. At the extreme, exclusively ICT based democratic participation (deliberation forums, e-voting etc) would mean that no access meant no vote. There is therefore a risk that some social groups will be under-represented or others over-represented in the policy formation processes and this would be incompatible with the equality principles of democracy.

[edit] Overcoming the digital divide by FLOSS software and Open access to knowledge

Many devotees of the Open content, free software, and Open access movements hope that the outcome of their activities will help or has already helped decrease the digital divide. Projects like One Laptop per Child aim to reduce the digital divide, yet they would hardly be possible without the existence of open standards and free open source software. Richard Stallman has advocated[2] free software among groups concerned with the digital divide such as the World Summit on the Information Society.

[edit] See also

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[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ 'Statistics' CitizensOnline.org.uk (2006). Retrieved 27 August 2006.
  2. ^ http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/weblog/transcript_of_rms_at_wsis_on_is_free_open_source_software_the_answer
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