Digital Divide

Digital Divide

As we’ve talked about in most of our previous blogs, technology is important for education, communicating with others, networking with people, and much more. What if we did not have that though? Several places suffer from problems such as this. It may be weird to think of schools that do not have computers or classes on computers, but there are other places that suffer from much more. In some developing countries, the only way they have to communicate with someone in the next town over is through someone travelling there.

Some parts of China would be considered a “developing country”, however there are much more prosperous cities (Such as Shanghai and Beijing). In those relatively developed regions, it is quite easy, and convenient to get access to the Internet. In China most people talk online by using QQ, which just like MSN, and they also use a social network named “Renren”. Also, they have the ability to use their mobile devices to get connected. All those ways have become another important way to communicate with other people, besides face-to-face in the real world. Interestingly, the Chinese government does not ban or control the Internet very strictly. There are a few websites are blocked in China, however, those blocks do not affect most people’s ability to get access the Internet. While in some other parts of China, which are less developed, it is still not easy to access to the Internet. In fact, computers are rarely used as part of their daily life. There are many reasons of this situation. I think the most important reason is that they as though they do not need to use computer, or that their lives can still easily function without the Internet. This is different compared to people living in the cities,who rely more on the Internet. Generally, the more developed parts of China have rapid growth of the Internet.

Speaking of global digital divide, Kazakhstan--a country bordering China in the east, has pretty big digital divide compared to more developed countries like The United States, Russia and some European countries. The rural side of the country has minimum access to the Internet, only a few people are able to have the Internet in their own home. However, in cities the situation is much different. In the cities there are companies providing the Internet to people but, they still face a problem with the rates. For lots of money someone would usually get the low-speed Internet with a traffic limitation of up to 2 gb. If somebody wanted to have the Internet similar to what Purdue University has, they would be charged significant amount of money. Nevertheless, every year the rates for higher Internet speed have been going down. This means, for the city the amount of high-speed Internet users are growing up in the same extent. More free public areas have set up Wi-Fi, and mobile companies have started to provide the Internet as well. The gap between technology and population is shrinking because of dependence of development on technology, in my opinion.

Each year we have been seeing technology grow and grow. With technology, such as Wi-Fi, that’s being offered by nearly everyone including McDonalds, it’s much easier to access the Internet. Most will agree that this is much better compared to only a few years ago when everyone had dial up. This sort of expansion of Internet access has helped us close the digital divide for some places in America. However, we still face an issue with many schools that do not have the budget for technology. Without technology in schools students may not get as much of an education, or they may also have problems receiving skills (like typing or using Microsoft office) that most find important in the real world. This is a Cultural Capital problem that not only computer scientist have been trying to solve, but many sociologist have as well. Programs like “Box Tops for Education”, provide money to schools, which then allows them to invest in more technology for their students. Also, for some countries with a larger digital gap, companies have started programs such as “One Laptop per Child”, which allows Internet access for children in less developed countries. Hopefully in the next few years, we may see this gap become smaller and smaller.