digital divide
Overview Cell phone and wireless laptop internet use have each grown more prevalent over the last year. Nearly half of all adults (47%) go online with a laptop using a Wi-Fi connection or mobile broadband card (up from the 39% who did so as of April 2009) while 40% of adults use the internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone (up from the 32% of Americans who did this in 2009). This means that 59% of adults now access the internet wirelessly using a laptop or cell phone—that is, they answered “yes” to at least one of these wireless access pathways. That adds up to an increase from the 51% who used a laptop or cell phone wirelessly in April 2009. The use of non-voice data applications on cell phones has grown dramatically over the last year.
Mobile Access 2010
The image of the affluent and white cellphone owner as the prototypical mobile Web user seems to be a mistaken one, according to a report published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Center. The study found that African-Americans and Hispanics continue to be more likely to own cellphones than whites and more likely to use their phones for a greater range of activities. This increase in mobile Web use, first noticed in a similar study by the Pew Center last summer, is driven both by age and economics, according to Aaron W. Smith of the Pew Center. Younger people and people living in households making less than $30,000 a year are increasing their mobile Web use at particularly fast rates, he said, and the African-American and Hispanic populations are younger and poorer relative to the white population.
Mobile Web Use and the Digital Divide
New digital divide seen for minorities on Internet
When the personal computer revolution began decades ago, Latinos and African Americans were much less likely to use one of the marvelous new machines. Then, when the Internet began to change life as we know it, these groups had less access to the Web and slower online connections placing them on the wrong side of the "digital divide." Today, as mobile technology puts computers in our pockets, Latinos and African Americans are more likely than the general population to access the Web by cellular phones, and they use their phones more often to do more things. But now some see a new "digital divide" emerging with Latinos and African Americans being challenged by more, not less, access to technology. It's tough to fill out a job application on a cell phone, for example. Researchers have noticed signs of segregation online that perpetuate divisions in the physical world.
October 2nd, 2012 In the previous post , the Jester mentioned, purely hypothetically, ”a wireless udder monitor that sends cattle owners an SMS when their cows are due for a milking.” Just weeks later, life imitates blog. The New York Times reports , in all seriousness, that Swiss researchers are working on a device that sends SMS text messages to farmers when their cows are in heat. Despite its serious reportage, the article mocks the Jester by leaving him with little room for comedic improvement. Nevertheless, some excerpts below from the article with Jesterly annotation.
The ICT4D Jester
Can Technology End Poverty? Kentaro Toyama This is the lead article of a forum on the role of information and communication technology in global development. A ten-year-old boy named Dhyaneshwar looked up for approval after carefully typing the word “Alaska” into a PC. “Bahut acchaa!” I cheered—“very good.”
Kentaro Toyama: Can Technology End Poverty?
A digital divide is an economic inequality between groups, broadly construed, in terms of access to, use of, or knowledge of information and communication technologies (ICT). [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The divide inside countries (such as the digital divide in the United States ) can refer to inequalities between individuals, households, businesses, and geographic areas at different socioeconomic and other demographic levels, while [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] the Global digital divide designates countries as the units of analysis and examines the divide between developing and developed countries on an international scale. [ 2 ] [ edit ] Approaches Conceptualization of the digital divide is often as follows: [ 6 ] [ 7 ] Subjects of connectivity, or who connects: individuals, organizations, enterprises, schools, hospitals, countries, etc. Characteristics of connectivity, or which attributes: demographic and socio-economic variables, such as income, education, age, geographic location, etc.
Digital divide
The ICT Development Index ( IDI ) is an index published by the United Nations International Telecommunication Union based on internationally agreed information and communication technologies (ICT) indicators. This makes it a valuable tool for benchmarking the most important indicators for measuring the information society. The IDI is a standard tool that governments, operators, development agencies, researchers and others can use to measure the digital divide and compare ICT performance within and across countries. The ICT Development Index is based on 11 ICT indicators, grouped in three clusters: access, use and skills. The access sub-index captures ICT readiness, and includes five infrastructure and access indicators (fixed-telephony, mobile telephony, international Internet bandwidth, households with computers, and households with Internet).
Digital Opportunity Index
An information society is a society where the creation, distribution, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. The aim of the information society is to gain competitive advantage internationally, through using information technology (IT) in a creative and productive way. The knowledge economy is its economic counterpart, whereby wealth is created through the economic exploitation of understanding. People who have the means to partake in this form of society are sometimes called digital citizens . This is one of many dozen labels that have been identified to suggest that humans are entering a new phase of society. [ 1 ]
Information society
The United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force (UN ICT TF) was a multi-stakeholder initiative associated with the United Nations which is "intended to lend a truly global dimension to the multitude of efforts to bridge the global digital divide , foster digital opportunity and thus firmly put ICT at the service of development for all." [ 1 ] UN Secretary General Kofi Annan addressing the 6th session of the UN ICT Task Force in New York, March 25, 2004. [ edit ] Establishment The UN ICT Task Force was created by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in November 2001, acting upon a request by Economic and Social Council ( ECOSOC ) dated July 11, 2000, with an initial term of mandate of three years (until the end of 2004).
United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force
