Digital Divide and Interpersonal Relationships

I think the digital divide does effect interpersonal relationships. The digital divide is the knowledge between people who use technology and those who don't. It can be related to socio-economic status, age, gender, desire, old and new technology battle, availability and generational. This ties into relationships because depending on the different technologies we use it places us somewhere on the digital divide. Technologies can either bring relationships closer or they can bring them apart. Because I am talking about the digital divide I will be focusing on how they affect the relationships and pull them apart for this post.

The usage of internet is higher in some regions and lower in others. This divides the regions because of the different amounts of people who use the internet. Here is a break down on world internet users by world regions:
Africa 3.4%
Asia 41.1%
Europe 24.7%
Middle East 2.9%
North America 15.6%
Latin America 11.0%
Oceania/Austrailia 1.3%

This statistics were found on the web at www.internetworldstats.com/stats.html

These are large differences. The amount of users in Asia compared to the low amount in Oceania/Austrailia is so large. How could we possibly stay well connected with them?

The digital divide has become such a large growing problem, President Obama is even trying to tackle the problem. In class we talked about the two solutions proposed. One was that broad band internet should be available to everyone, like electricity is. This seems like a great idea but there are still so many people that do not have access to the resources to access the internet. The second idea is that all cell phones have internet access. I just did not think this would solve the situation either because again there are many people that don't have cell phones. There may be some cultures that don't want to use them, some may not be able to afford a phone and a service, and people may not know how to access it or use it. I am glad that he is addressing the issue though. Technology is growing so fast that we need to address these issues before they get worse and the divide becomes larger.

I know that technology brings many people together, as I have mentioned in my other posts. It allows those who have the technology to connect on so many basis but then there are those who cannot.

In the article we read in class called, "Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide," by Mark Warschauer it examines the concept of a digital divide by introducing problematic examples of community technology projects.

One of them is "A Model Computer Lab." The United States Agency for International Development decided to donate a computer laboratory to the college of education at a major Egyptian university. The purpose of the donation was to establish a model teacher-training program in computer-assisted learning.

USAID purchased all the hardware and software. However, the school was responsible to keep them up and ruuning.

The college and university could not easily justify spending the money to house and maintain
such an expensive laboratory for a single program when other programs were poorly funded. No money was available to hire an outside LAN manager or provide Internet access at the level agreed upon in the proposal.

Due to the issued involved with the donation the computers sat in their boxes for more than a year causing their economic value to decrease 1/3.

The problem here is that the college did not have the knowledge to work the computers and keep them running. The donation began dividing the school because other colleges were jealous. The board could not justify spending money when other colleges were poorly funded. They also lacked the funds to support the computers or hire anyone to.

When they were trying to help it caused the divide to grow a little larger. It is difficult to find a solution that will solve the issue. You cannot just give people things because they do not have the money or the knowledge to support them. There would need to be some sort of class or program that could help people learn more about the technology.

Some believe that it is not their problem to help the solution, but I think that there should be something done in order for us to keep our society connected without leaving some behind.