Weekly task 3 - the digital divide

A map considering the digital divide from a perspect of amount of computers can be seen here.

The first view
The differences between population groups in a society are also one reason for the digital divide like the differences between industrialized countries and developing countries: If people have a lack of information and computer technology skills they have bad changes for well paid jobs. People with a low-income have less option to buy their own computers or have internet access. It´s like a vicious circle. The governments as well as private organizations of each countries are searching for opportunities to solve this problem.

The organization “One Laptop Per Childs” developed a laptop especially for children in emerging markets and developing countries. In principle this is a really good idea but on the other hand it is important not to forget other problems in these countries like the lack of drinking water or food. Furthermore is the using of computer by children in the industrialized countries disputed because of the high level of playing computer games. The same problems could be become in the developing countries. The governments of industrialized countries want that everybody have access to the internet. For realizing this project a lot of money is necessary and the government gets this money from the citizens by decreasing taxes.

I think it is the job of the government to ensure that everybody have access to the internet. Especially for people who searches for jobs or pupils and students. Today the internet or in general computers are a basic need like water and food. You need to do homeworks, to write your thesis, to search for the next vacations and inform yourself about your possible future employer. Of course you can say it is not fair that the people in big cities pay for the people in rural regions but that is the system: the working people pay for the workless people, young working people pay for the people in pension and so on.

The second view
My view to this issue is that the Digital Divide actually deepens the gap between the poor and rich people. The government should help people to get access to the Internet and the usage of technology. This could also increase the knowledge of the citizens and maybe even increase the civilization of the people, when the knowledge is close and easy to reach.

But still, drying to make the Digital Divide to vanish is not easy. The poorest people, and the ones who are “excluded” from the society can be totally out from the technology. Educating the older people too would be important.

The technology offers a lot of opportunities to everyone, and everyone should be justified to use it. Now the Digital Divide just separates people from each other.

Digital divide in practise
During the lectures we talked a lot of opportunity to shop online and how the digital divide excludes people without access to Internet from opportunities to buy for example flight tickets online. I understand that shopping online can help people to save a lot of money but I do not think that it is the biggest issue considering the digital divide.

The Internet is nowadays a vital source of information and all the information in the net already exists and all anyone needs is a computer to access to it. So from this point of view Internet is a cheap source of information. That is why it is important to develop new ways to make the gap of digital divide between rich and poor countries smaller. Of course the multinational companies are more interested of these kind of projects if they think that in the developing countries there might be some profit coming in. But if we think realistic, these people have some bigger needs than booking flight tickets a bit cheaper.

On the other hand, digital divide is not only a matter of having a computer. For example in China people are tried to be excluded from information that the government does not want people to have. I think that this is also digital dividing.