Talk:Digital divide

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Contents

[edit] Old talk

From an educational context, regarding the digital divide:

There is digital divide in regard to professional development (focused on the use of technology) for teachers.

There is a digital divide in regard to instructional/educational uses of technology

When considering digital divide, there is an economical aspect that needs to be considered; especially home/personal ownership

There is a digital divide in regard to the support and resources availabe for parents, teachers, and students.

The NCLB Act is helping to close the digital divide in some areas through the standards that were establishe

[edit] Cleanup

I have begun the process of cleaning up this article, initially by adding more sections.

The text itself needs editing - it is too verbose, and textbookish.

The article would benefit from some illustrative graphs, showing world regions affected by the digital divide, and possibly relating them to economic indicators for those regions.

A short discussion about methods/technologies used to address the divide would be useful, but without going into too many details - many of the methods/technologies/products have independent articles on Wikipedia and we should link to those. Achitnis 14:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

This article is poorly written. I would suggest a translation of the article out of Bad Writing into at least Acceptable Writing, if someone can find the time (i.e. a rewrite). 66.240.10.170 06:56, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] wiareport.org external link

I removed this as it was added by the institution that "owns" the project:

It looks like it could be good information but I haven't heard of it before and the presentation is very "bloggy" making it difficult (on a very brief look at least) to see what is finished research and what is untested information and opinion. Other editors should take a look and see what they think.

While we're on the subject the external links section could do with pruning and focusing. It's a bit of a jumble at the moment. --Siobhan Hansa 23:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Advantages and Disadvantages

It would be nice if some information on the benefits and drawback from narrowing the digital divide gap, as well as a few impacts the digital divide causes. 81.106.116.14 00:29, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Responses to "Digital Divide" by Bolt and Crawford

According to Bolt and Crawford, education has changed dramatically in the past 25 years, changing towards a society based dramatically on computer education and advanced connectivity, but classrooms have became overcrowded and harder to reach out to the students.

The digital divide is the separation between books and a computer. Some students go to the internet to find an answer to a homework problem intead of going to a book and looking for the answer and understanding it.

Since more information is available with new technology, it is easier to specialize education to specific needs, but since teachers don't have the training required or access this information effectively, a lot of this advantage is lost.

The cost of the computers and the programs which also have to be updated regularly increases the cost of tehcnology. Computer funding takes away from the other programs throughout the school.

Joyced 18:49, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] University of Pittsburgh Digital Citizenship project

Graduate class of Fall 07 in Digital Citizenship, University of Pittsburgh, will improve this article, aiming for GA/FA status by the end of the year. Members:

  1. User:Piotrus, task coordinator

The project has ended. While the article has not reached a GA level, it has been improved close to it (before after). Thanks to all who contributed (including of course many editors unaffiliated with the project!). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 12:47, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Related issues

I have moved this glorified 'see also' section from talk.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  18:58, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

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

[edit] Challenges and social detriments

I am moving this unreferenced section added by an anon from main body to talk. It seems somewhat WP:ORish to me.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 03:22, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Some observers have noted social challenges arising from the global spread of the Internet, including:

  • Unwanted information: The Internet provides a platform for the rapid distribution of information. Some of that information is unwanted by certain groups, such as pornography, allegedly obscene or immoral information, or offensive language; some of that information is unwanted by certain governments, such as news from a variety of sources, which may break an information monopoly previously held by state (propaganda) media; and some of that information is unwanted by nearly everyone, such as e-mail spam and computer viruses. Opponents of this view believe that the best answer to the uncontrolled flow of information that you disagree with is to either not listen to it or to promote your own ideas in the free marketplace of ideas.
  • "Quality" of communications: The Internet allows rapid communication between more people, but some believe that this is leading interpersonal communications to become shallow and staged. Others feel that the Internet allows people to hide behind their computers and express "hateful", "offensive", "damaging", or otherwise unwanted opinions that they wouldn't ordinarily communicate in person. Indeed, Internet communications provide increased opportunities for anonymous expression.
  • Alleged cultural imperialism: The Internet makes it easier to exchange cultural ideas and values. Some cultures can perceive this exchange to be detrimental to them, especially where a culture is struggling to preserve its ways, and trying to shield their children from content they believe to be "immoral", "materialistic", and "antisocial". Others counter that no one is forcing people from other cultures to subscribe to extracultural information flows, and that they do so of their own free will, whereas genuine imperialism is based on force and coercion.
  • Content inequality: There are still huge gaps not only in Internet accessibility, but content. Internet content in some languages is seriously lacking or virtually non-existent. This can economically "leave behind" whole groups of people, but more importantly allow economically aggressive outsiders to move in on their territory. Others advocate that groups without content on the Internet should create content or digitize their own non-digital content, to address any perceived imbalances.
  • Privacy: Some critics question why governments spy on or monitor the Internet, especially when they do so outside of a legal framework; some governments question the use of the Internet to "spy" on previously disconnected countries; some governments fear that the Internet and the ending of state information monopolies and information asymmetry could be result in social or political unrest within their nations.
  • Control: ARPA, an agency of the U.S. Government, created the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet; due to this, certain centralized services, especially the DNS system of Internet domain names, are under the oversight of the US government. This is controversial; some critics of ICANN believe that control of these centralized services should be turned over to an international body such as the United Nations, or to regional Internet registries, or to alternative DNS roots. Some critics of the proposal to replace US control of ICANN with UN control believe that the US Government has administered the Internet in a technically and politically neutral fashion, even allowing governments hostile to it (such as Cuba, the People's Republic of China, Iran, etc.) to participate fully in the registration of names and the governance of their own top-level domains. These critics believe that the United Nations, being a union of democratic and undemocratic member states, might attempt to use any control ceded by ICANN to further censor the Internet. Many countries, including the United States, have used state control to censor the internet in the past.

[edit] National interest and social benefit

I have cut this section; it is unreferenced and whats worse, various points were added by multiplie editors over the past years, making it a rather incoherent OR.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 03:27, 29 November 2007 (UTC)


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 hinders 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 integrates 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.[1]

[edit] External link: Published article in Greek regarding the digital devide between rural and urban areas.

So basically this a published article in an IT magazine... it is extensive, it was added in the external links, but it is in Greek, so unless someone can speak Greek (and since there isn't a corresponding article in the Greek Wikipedia), then...? Should it stay or should it go - and if yes, is the current presentation proper? Please advise and discuss... thanks MarekTT (talk) 22:54, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[2] is a blog, so the reliability is an issue. A non-English source can be used as a reference, or in an article dedicated to non-English issue, but it doesn't seem useful here. As we have recently pruned the overgrown elink section, we should be careful not to add such links; I will go ahead and remove it.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:14, 14 December 2007 (UTC)