Digital Divide

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Recommended: Digital divide and its impact on education

Some say the Internet is the savior for the world. It will bring all the people of the world together for universal peace. The great equalizer the educator the cash cow, the greatest communication infrastructure ever. The World Wide Web is the single greatest evolution of technology in my lifetime the “end all and be all” of killer applications for the Personal Computer. Well what if you have never used a computer, maybe you have never seen one in real life. Would you know how to turn it on, let alone log on to the information super highway? I bet not. America was founded on the idea of equality for all her citizens. The price of a computer is the same for all consumers but that doesn’t make it affordable for all. So what do we do when equality is not enough? Only 41.5% of us households have the Internet in their homes. (In Class Charts I) Most people turn to other locations for example school, work, community centers, libraries or web café’s for access to the Internet and computers. By no fault of their own the Infrastructure is simply not completely in place to allow access to every citizen. Is universal access to the Internet something the government is prepared to provide or something we as independent citizens will do? With the concern concentrated on technology Infrastructure we can bridge the Digital Divide.
The Digital Divide is the poverty line of the twenty-first century. It is the term use to describe the separation between the people who have access to, knowledge of, and training on, new technology from the people who have little to no access and no technical knowledge of technology. The term Digital reefers to the format used by computers called binary code. Binary code is compiled of ones and zeros (1001110001) it is a basic computer language. When technical gurus began to talk about codes and servers you might become confused but what if the term’s disk drive, modem, upload download, e-mail was just as confusing. This is a reality for a large section of the population. The distribution of our technological knowledge and access to the technology is not demographically balanced. This division is not based solely on economic factors, cultural and education factors also play major roles. This Digital Divide is a fixable problem and in fact the divide has begun to close.
The Digitally Divided population have a similar demographic, usually they ...

... middle of paper ...

...hink of millions of students all being trained on Acme software and Acme systems when they get a good job and purchase there own computer chances are they will stick with Acme and that is how capitalism is supposed to work. So I would say to Acme take a risk on our poor and uneducated they need to have a level playing field.

Works Cited

Casillas, Ofelia; Los Angles Times; August 4, 2001; An Assist by Magic Johnson. URL http://latimes.com/news/local/la-000063338aug04.story In Class Charts Digital Divide Lecture, John Decker, December 4, 2001, URL http://courses.sdsu.edu/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_57_1&frame=top

Johnson, Carrie; Washington Post; December 11, 2001; Microsoft Revises Private-Lawsuit Offer; URL http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22672-2001Dec10.html

Linn, Allison; Los Angles Times; November 26, 2001; Microsoft Settlement Plan Criticized; URL http://latimes.com/technology/wire/sns-ap-microsoft1127nov26.story

Newman, Morris; Los Angles Times; January 25 2001; Cyber South Central; URL http://latimes.com/technology/la-000007046jun30.story

NTIA National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 2000, URL http://www.digitaldivide.gov/

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