Hi
Thank you David Dillard and Kenan Patrick Jarboe for your inputs and
valuable insights and good advice on standards related to measuring the
Digital Divide (see below).
We all seem to agree that Digital Divide is much more than
"percentage of households with PC".... and that Digital Divide is in fact a
much softer and complex issue that has to do with the way a nation and
individuals use IT and digital technology as a means of production and as a
mechanism for growth (be that financial, intellectual, welfare oriented
etc.). The academic community and other research agencies (national or NGO)
have in my view the obligation to develop such measures and adopt the as
international standards.
My problem at the moment remains, however, which of the existing
internationally accepted measures (e.g., OECD or EU or Canada, or US or
Australia etc) best reflects such high level definitions and
conceptualizations of Digital Divide.
I am particularly impressed by the work done in SIBIS
http://www.empirica.biz/sibis/links/ist_links.htm - a standard to measure
readiness to the Information Society (digital divide included).
See particularly their hand book of Statistical Indicators of the
Information Society at: http://www.empirica.biz/sibis/handbook/handbook.htm
We are considering adopting these standards as national standards for
benchmarking Israel vis a vis the EU and other countries since it is:
1. Standard de-facto adopted by all EU states that is measuring US and
Switzerland as well.
2. Some of its 133 indicators do reflect the higher order interpretations of
the notion of digital divide.
I will appreciate comments by you and other member of this list on this
Thank you again
Yoni
Yoni Mizrachi PhD [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.digitalyoni.com לאתר
שלי
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Emek Yezreel Academic College
Affiliations: Departments of Library and Information Science University of
Haifa.
My fax in Israel: 057-7974316
My eFax for USA: 17075982104
שווה ביקור: האתר הלאומי של הועדה הלאומית לחברת המידע www.maor.gov.il
-----
Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David P.
Dillard
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 9:38 PM
To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group
Subject: Re: [DDN] FW: Standard Measures of Digital Divide Help Needed
To this quite correct observation that measurement depends on the object
measured, I would like to add a few thoughts.
First of all, the digital divide is qualitative and not easily quantified.
If a bus stops at a corner and picks up five passengers, each pays two
dollars, it is easy to determine that the bus has taken in ten dollars of
revenue at that stop. How does one quantify a lack of interest in
computers, being so hungry that one cannot think academically, let alone
spend productive time at a computer or being interested in school and
learning about computers but having a father who regularly beats up a child
at home while drunk. I do not think that all phenomena that need to be
studied lend themselves to statistical or numerical analysis and the digital
divide is in this direction of tough to quantify.
Regarding how one defines the digital divide, it is a matter of concern that
the focus of many in understanding this situation is only on computer or its
equivalent and internet access.
Not much is said in any literature that I have read concerning the digital
divide regarding teaching skills in and providing access to bibliographic
databases, like but hardly limited to ERIC, PsychINfo, General Science
Abstracts, Social Science Abstracts, Inspec, Compendex, Medline, CINAHL, Art
Index, ABI Inform, Business Source Premier, Academic Search Premier and many
many more. Oceans of ink have spilled regarding some of the dangers of the
internet to children. Try a microscope or a telescope or both and one will
be hard pressed to find hate group literature or pornography or violent
content in the many databases out there like those listed above. Indeed the
content is these tools is highly quality controlled in the sense that the
coverage of the database is very precisely defined. The searching software
in the better databanks, furthermore, is much richer in capabilities than
that provided by search engines. One can use them to find quite on topic
reponsive results to complex and convoluted research topics. Without
databases, source lists like the one mentioned in the post that I am
responding to would be a very unlikely outcome of searching the internet
with the search engine tools of today.
Finally, as a very intelligent librarian from North Carolina, pointed out in
a talk he gave recently, the emphasis in libraries (that was his focus but
for the word libraries could be substituted education) needs to be on
learning and teaching needed knowledge and skills and technology and devices
are only to be discussed and of importance for their role in facilitating
and improving this mission and not as a discipline or subject
in their own right. Hence computer skills should be taught and taught
well but at the same time emphasis should be ongoing in showing how these
skills facilitate gaining or using or expressing knowledge and learning in
the various intellectual disciplines. The expressed prize for learning Word
should not be that it facilitates learning PowerPoint, but rather that Word
expedites writing and packaging a well written document about a topic such
as history or literature.
I often wonder if we would not be better off if we thought in terms of the
educational or knowledge divide rather than in terms of the digital divide
and not in terms of lack of access to the internet, but rather to lack of
access to the important information on the internet.
Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/net-gold>
<http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ringleaders/davidd.html>
<http://www.kovacs.com/medref-l/medref-l.html>
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World Business Community Advisor
<http://www.WorldBusinessCommunity.org>
=====================================================
On Thu, 30 Sep 2004, Kenan Jarboe wrote:
> Yoni,
> David has posted some very good references. But let us keep in mind
> that a standard measure of the digital divide requires a standard
> definition of what is the digital divide. And I will not repeat the
> numerous discussions and debates on that subject that have been held
> on this forum. Suffice it to say that if you pick a definition, a
> measure will follow -- and there will be legitimate disagreement as to
whether that is the right measure.
> Ken
> Kenan Patrick Jarboe, Ph.D.
> Athena Alliance
> 911 East Capitol Street, SE
> Washington, DC 20003-3903
> (202) 547-7064
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.athenaalliance.org
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