Digital Divide

Digital Divide



I- Digital Divide

- Inequalities in Internet access and use are shaped by broader social inequalities.

- Most fundamentally, the digital divide is about physical access to the Internet and its related to hardware and software but access is not the whole story.

- There is nit a single divide, but several:
- The access divide
- The skills divide
- The economic opportunity divide
- The democratic divide



- Global division between developed, developing and least developed countries.

- Divide is about production of content, not just its consumption.

II- Does Digital Divide Matter?

No:

- Natural play of Market forces makes internet across available to all who want it.

- More pressing problems facing today's societies, like poverty, hunger, and disease.

- Computers and net are akin to other luxury commodities that will never be equally.

Yes:

- Internet is different (a ladder out of poverty).

- Global shift towards informationalism.

- Developed countries have gradually increased their exports of knowledge- intensive products and services which the poorer parts of the developing world such as Africa fall even further behind.

- Developing countries may find that they arrive in terms of industrial development only to find that the game has moved on to post industrialism and informationalism.
- Internet diffusion may have powerful effects in areas such as education, health care, labor productivity, democratization, citizenship, social cohesion and integration with the world economy.

III- The Global digital divide

- Economic development variables

- Technology infrastructure variables

- Relevant policy variables

- Human capital variables

- Political capital

IV- Simputer

- A low cost portable alternative to PCs by which benefit of IT can reach common people.

- It has a special role in the third world because it ensures that illiteracy is no longer a barrier to handling a computer.