John and All, In 1990, about 14 years ago, I was researching for a paper on video-conferencing. To my surprised, the problem why video-conferencing was not popular, then, had nothing to do with the technology, nor the services provided by the phone companies etc. (It was still rather expensive then and the technologies were not really that great, but compared to paying for hotels, flights etc. for participants naturally the savings using video-conferencing won hands-down). Some of the reasons were: it is much more fun to meet face-to-face, in many cases travelling off-site is considered perk for many people, meeting face-to-face network better etc. etc.
Since then, I have been observing and pondering over this issue all these years and of course from video-conferencing my interest shifted to internet and elearning. Here are some of my own reasonings. Aside from perk for participants, perhaps we should also look at businesses such as hotels, air-lines, car-rentals, catering, event organizers etc. These businesses depend and encourage people to travel. If we all go virtual, it is not just the matter of these businesses are losing money, but we are also looking at people losing jobs. And most of the employees of this business sector are low-skills. Which means if they lose thier job it is so much harder for them to find another job because they might be 'skill-out' from the faster and faster moving world that demand higher and higher digital skills. Therefore it is a real balancing act (I sure hope governments are paying attention and looking into all these factors). The problem with our group (DDN) is, most of us are highly educated, have good jobs, good income, well equipped or provided with all the digital gadgets that enabled us to be 'virtual'. But are we the minority or the majority? As Siobhan just posted: "Stephens estimates that 70 percent of Navajo Nation residents are still without phone service, down from 78 percent before cell service." http://www.gallupindependent.com/2005/sept/091505onsat.html ". Today I also found an interesting article from The Economist Sept 17-23rd, 2005 (I have not had the chance to read it yet) title "How the Internet killed the phone business". I worked for US long distance compay and telco manufacturers from 1992-2002 and major in telco mgmt., without having to read the article I think I know most of the stories. So, internet killed telephone business, I am one of the many thousands who lost our well paid jobs. I am sure we also see jobs going away from post-offices, business cards, birthday cards, printing etc. etc. The world is changing, is evolving and there is no way we could stop it from happening. BUT, if we so wish to push the concepts of DDN, perhaps we should also pay attention to other factors that are happening in our society/world. If our intention is to help those that are less advantage, perhaps we should look at it in a much more complete picture and avoid looking at just a fragmented segment. Just some of my sketchy thoughts. Cindy _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
