In the article Assessing the global accessibility of the Internet, digital divide is caused by different level of computer skills, and factors such as ethnicity and language. It also compares infrastructure cost, including connectivity infrastructure and service cost, among Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East and North America, by using methodology and finding with discussion method. The result provides the gap exists already and how to narrow down it is still an issue to look into, for example who will pay for that progress?
Keywords: accessibility, digital divide, infrastructure, responsibility
Comments
As telecommunication infrastructures have to operate as connectivity infrastructure, Africa has poor infrastructure and no regional network with low bandwidth; Europe and North America are on the opposite side; Asia ranked in between those two part and Middle East has conflicts of policy interests. The basic picture here presents the location needs help. However who will respond for build the infrastructure, local government, world organization of technology promoting, or packed with some developed countries that have willing to help? Now matter from which consider, there are all limits outline visually.
First, local governments, the fact is that local governments are struggling with living standard of their residents. They have to giving their limits budget on where people needs most, such as poverty and starving problem. And they do care for education, but the primary point is developing traditional education widely inside country, because it is less expensive than e-education. The fund for face-to-face education is basically the pay for tutors and classroom is not a big problem. Also emerge education problem is to let population meets the fundamental knowledge level with other parts of world. E-education looks too expensive and luxury there, and computer skill is not on the emerge list comparing with others.
Secondly, volunteering organizations do not have the possibility to help all the low-technical areas; even maybe a country is hard to satisfy by a single organization. No matter the organization is profit or non-profit, the technology products suppliers relate to the organization are looking for profits. And to be frankly, the effects of e-education program is hard to measure in a short-term for both impact on local people and feedback to the suppliers who want financial gains. Also, customer loyalty of suppliers is low, if other company offers lower products. And one more point is that people will not changing their products in a short time, since they can’t afford further cost of technology goods. So it is more like one time investment without good sale return guaranteed for suppliers, even suppliers want to do something nice like charity, the company can’t keep running in a long term without income.
Last one is about relates to other developed country, it is more like match one by one, rich countries have the responsibility to make some contribution to help poor countries. However, the question here is the way of giving help. Sometimes it easily should shift to culture colony. Rich countries help the poor countries of education; value added is unavoidable and in some case is adding unconsciously. Local culture might be lost or got challenge by out coming ideas. There could lead to potential political problem inside poor country if their presenting government is not stable enough. And some rich country governments do treat this approach as a way to extend their power in the world, and then the outcome can’t be peaceful.
After all the considerations, accepting the fact of digital divide is there in the world, and figure out a way to solve it is necessary in present. Maybe combining three ways together, or should arranging rich countries into several groups and let groups helping poor countries to avoiding culture issue and political conflicts?
I think this paper “Assessing the global accessibility of the Internet” was written from a very narrow perspective. For example, the population according to CIA world fact book (no idea how reliable this source is) the population of China is set at 1,338,612,968 (July 2010), yet the number of respondents to the questionnaire from China was 4. There are also no entries for oceania at all where the population size is reputed to be 38,894,851. To generalise and produce patters of users from such a small evidence base seems a bit meaningless.
Interestingly though Ngini et al (2002) go on to highlight that only 55% of the respondents from the UK thought the bandwidth available was adequate. No explanation is given – although the authors tell us recipients in the UK are “in receipt of more advanced bandwidth than the respondents from Nigeria”. I am left thinking – so what?
I completely agree Jenni - my first thought at the end was 'so what?'. I wondered if I had missed something in this paper. It started with some interesting comments like "situation for some countries is that access may either be unavailable or not considered a priority" - raising hopes in the reader of consideration of how relative priorities are determined in different countries, but this was not followed up. Following a statistical description of access, costs etc, which did not maintain my interest, there are findings from a small piece of research. The methodology was questionable since the questionnaire was only available in English and distributed by email only once respondents had followed up on an invite to go to the website. The sample was very small, as Jenni highlighted - with 152 responses from 708 invitations to participate. Definitions of internet activity e.g. 'research', 'publication of materials', 'leisure' etc are vague or ambiguous limiting the value of the results. The finding that some individuals access the internet at work is an interesting factor not picked up in other readings this week and could be explored as an option to increase familiarity and use of the internet in some countries but disappointingly, the authors don't discuss this to any depth. Overall, I found this article disappointing as it was overly descriptive, with poor methodology and a lack of in depth analysis. It wasn't clear what it set out to achieve, the points it was trying to make or the type of article it was intended to be.
This is a massive topic this week with huge implications on a global scale and for me the paper doesn't reflect the importance or complexity of the topic. I'm glad it wasn't just me who tossed it to one side this week after one reading.
I Have to say I am with Jenni and Jane with their thoughts on the paper. There was indeed a bit of ambiguity of definitions re Internet activity and weighted sampling of those who can read english. Infact, I would suggest that this is actually discriminaton!?!
Just my tupence worth....