Digital Divide

Digital Divide

 

'The digital divide refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all' - wikipedia

 

War, Poverty, Electricity/power

 

War:

Often war can affect a countries ability to join in with the current technology state. There are countries that will find themselves involved in wars often and others were the people will see one war in their life time if that. This means that these countries who are always facing wars have to constantly buy equipment and pay money to rebuild there country after a war. The money the country has is being put into this and so they do not have the money to supply everyone with technology as they are not in a financial state to.

 

 

Approaches to tackling the divide:

 

New forms of enterprise, new types of skills, new sources of wealth and new forms of social interaction - these are among the benefits of the "Information Society". Businesses and governments alike promote the new technologies for the benefits they will bring.

Many people, mostly those already poor or socially disadvantaged in some other way, cannot or do not have access to the new technologies and the opportunities these bring. And this basically puts these peole on the wrong side of the ‘digital divide’

Arizona state has contracted with 9 leading telecoms providers to develop the service.  In this way the network is being "pushed" out to the communities. The "pull" factor comes from the state encouraging, and financially supporting, local authorities, tribal governments, health and education providers and the not-for-profit sector to aggregate demand.

 The first step consists in providing access. Income is the decisive variable in this challenge.

Projects like One Laptop per Child and 50x15 are nevertheless a positive steps in reducing the divide, since they started a competition for the provision of cheaper access equipment. They tend to rely heavily upon open standards and free open source software.

One of the main challenge in overcoming the digital divide is to widen the influence of the respective policies from those carried out by telecommunications authority, to the entire public sector.

 

Education:

 

 The parts of the world that have a large amount of internet access is the western world, the United States, Europe and Northern Asia, where as access is more restricted in the poorer less developed parts of the world such as Africa, India and southern parts of Asia.  These poorer nations are unable to afford the initial start up cost to be able to invest into technology to allow their nation to be able to have and maintain internet access. By a country not having internet access, it means that schools are unable to teach IT skills and take advantage of the vast amount of information available on the web.With a lack of IT skills people from these countries are unable to compete at an international level. The lack of available teaching equipment in schools also means it is harder for the teachers to give the students all the possible research and knowledge, and it also creates the problem of students not being able to do indepedant research. 

One area of focus was school computer access. In the 1990s, better resourced schools were much more likely to provide their students with regular computer access; and, at the end of the decade, these schools were much more likely to have internet access

Technology offers a unique opportunity to extend learning support beyond the classroom

Given that developing countries do not have access to extensive educational opportunities, there is still a great need for technological education. Technology has the potential to greatly contribute to the building of developing areas. By bridging the digital divide, it is possible for poverty-stricken regions to enhance communication with other countries, therefore offering economic, social, and political opportunities.

One school of thought holds that, as the internet becomes progressively more sophisticated, the digital divide is growing, that those to whom it is least available are being left behind. Countries with a wide availability of Internet access can advance the economics of that country on a local and global scale. In Western society commerce, and social interaction generally, is almost entirely Internet dependant to a lesser or greater extent.

 

Divide between young and old:

 

 The internet is growing at a significant rate.  Many companies are moving their activities onto the internet, and new businesses are being developed that operate purely on the internet.  There is a vast amount of information available on the net and social networking sites allow friends and family to keep in touch.  There is a significant divide present between the older and younger generation.  “Only 34 percent of the 34.5 million Americans over age 65 use the Internet compared to 89 percent of 18 to 28 year-olds and 86 percent of 29 to 40 year-olds.” The older generation didn’t have the internet through their education, so where never taught IT skills.  This leaves senior citizens out of touch with society, friends and family on the internet, businesses and information for a large proportion of the population

 

One laptop per child:

 

A small machine with a big mission. The XO is a potent learning tool designed and built especially for children in developing countries, living in some of the most remote environments. It’s about the size of a small textbook. It has built-in wireless and a unique screen that is readable under direct sunlight for children who go to school outdoors. It’s extremely durable, brilliantly functional, energy-efficient, and fun.

 

http://blog.laptop.org/2010/05/15/on-afghanistan-2/

http://www.haitipartners.org/2010/08/xo-laptop-helps-healing/