As this week's subject is websites for political campaigns, I think we also need to talk about a digital divide between the Internet haves and have-nots.
Certainly, there're people who don't afford to access to the Internet and political campaigns via websites which seem everybody is enjoying these days may result in a serious political alienation for those who don’t have the Internet access.
Having access to the Internet (which includes purchasing a computer set and a plan of high speed Internet) is still a luxury to many people.
For them, politicians' focusing on communication via the Internet only means marginalizing them from the politics. I think this is a critical issue to talk about.
You can read a relevant story in the next link from Washington post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/22/AR2007072201278.html
Woong Jo Chang 2/12/08
I think that Woong Jo has hit on something that many of us in the middle class and above tend to overlook – the digital divide. The Post points out that a large segment of the population here in the U.S. has at best limited digital access. True enough people can gain free access to computers in the library and even in some computer shops, but those are usually time limited. In Grandview it’s an hour with a couple of 15 minute extensions.
My guess is most people who don’t have computers and rely on free library-type access aren’t going to political Websites. And I would think that these folks are disenfranchised in more ways than just political. While cities around the country, including Cleveland (one of the poorest cities in the U.S.) I think, are working to provide free Wi-Fi, what good will that do if people can’t afford computers? Internet home service isn’t cheap, either. It’s also true that most coffee shops provide free Wi-Fi, but if you’re making minimum wages how many lattes, or even $1.95 coffees, can you afford?
Perhaps the U.S. needs a program much like the one developed for poorer countries in which the kids are provided with small portable computers (like the one Betsy brought in last week) that cost under $200.
Have any candidates addressed this issue since the Post story emerged last summer? I’m not aware of any, though it’s not something I monitored religiously. The more I think about this, the more I think it is a serious issue that needs some resolution, otherwise the poor just continue to get left behind in new ways, including the Info Highway.
tc brown 2/12
Digital divide
I am constantly concerned about the digital divide, though media report less and less on just how wide and deep the gulf is between the digital haves and have-nots. That said, I believe there is a faint flicker of hope on the digital screen. And that is the cell phone and the ability to text message. I’m sure that the 2010 census will show that cell phones are nearly universal, even in the poorest households. In fact, many poor people, like many youthful digital natives, no longer have land-line telephones. Instead, they have abandoned expensive home-based telephones in exchange for cell phones. Many struggling urban families move constantly—some every three or four months. Cell phones alleviate, to some extent, the upheaval of moving; families can hold on to the same phone number and not have to worry about re-installation and all the fees associated with it.
Text messaging is sometimes an extra expense on digital contracts or calling cards. But increasingly, I find, poor people I know are purchasing it because it allows them an efficient and fairly inexpensive means of communicating. It also provides them some digital access and potential internet access, if they can afford it. In any case, text messaging is one way to keep the have-nots in the digital loop—at least to some extent.
Literacy and the digital divide also concern me. The advent of the digital age poses, on the one hand, a heavier burden of reading on poor populations that are growing increasingly more illiterate due to a beleaguered urban school system. For example, in the city of Cleveland, something like 6 out of 10 people (unsure of the age range) are functionally illiterate, unable to read little more than a check pay stub, according to a report a few years ago by a local literacy advocacy agency. That is damn scary. Access to online information does little good if one cannot read. On the other hand, access to the computer can be an aid in improving one’s reading skills. Feb. 12, 2008
Charlise
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