To Yacine: It is hard to disagree with your pithily expressed frustration, or sharp definition of the social schisms underlying the 'digital divide' (DD).... however I would suggest there is some political utility in keeping these two words as a sort of quick shorthand.. if it can focus the attention of policymakers ... DD resonates at several levels, after all, one of the first references was in the US (then) Vice President Gore's introduction of a US Internet policy, and what could be called the 'Carthage' principle... where he said that if the information highway bypassed his birthplace, Carthage, Te (pop 2251), he was not interested in promoting it... and the big question was how to build on-ramps accessible from small rural areas.... admittedly this ignores critical development issues like literacy, language of access, utility of information, and modalities in zero-electricity regions..... but I would not disregard the value of the DD label as a good shorthand for mobilizing political will and thus (hopefully) resources ....... while surely we must not ignore underlying social factors which are truly important, the speed is so precipitous at which community Internet access technologies are moving, we can scarcely afford to wait...here follows a quick personal (admittedly 'northern') anecdote to illustrate.....for years like many, I have used all kinds of devices/strategies to get at my email while travelling... and found it sometimes easier in Africa or India than in rural US or UK...but when an Internet cafe popped up in London Heathrow, with branches in some motorway rest areas out in the countryside..I joined happily, and received a little card (named E-Internet Exchange with a logo suspiciously close to UNESCO's!)..that was stamped each time, promising bonuses to frequent users... now, it seemed, my access problem was solved for pennies a visit.... EXCEPT I had not allowed for the vagaries of the 'free' market system (nor the awesomely steep technology curve)... two weeks ago I smugly steered my car into the Oxford (M40) motorway service center to have a coffee and pickup my email...... but lo and behold.. the shiny computer consoles were nowhere to be seen, no eager service person ushering me to my keyboard, just tables, trays and people eating.... I found the 'manager' who apologised and said there was just not enough business to justify continuing the cyber-investment.....so I began to twitter through early stages of e-withdrawal ...........on the way back through London, I found part of the reason for the demise of roadside E-Internet Exchange..............near Victoria Station is a cavernous cybercasino-type facility (which did not honour my little card)... where there were at least four times as many consoles, and no expensive 7/24 service-person, just cash machines like a swiss busstop, where you put in your coins or banknote, and out comes a unique password... good for 60 minutes... you then wait your turn for one of the scores of folks to get up ... you leap in, sit down, enter your password at the prompt, and the Internet is yours.... interestingly, this is only a block from the new DFID HQ.... one wonders if that is pure chance? this is the first time I have encountered this kind of automated Internet cafe... but maybe others have seen it elsewhere? certainly it must be confined (like big hospitals, well-financed public schools) to wealthy, probably urban areas? again endorsing the metaphor of the 'digital divide'.....
Yacine Khelladi wrote: > > Just as we seek to close the Digital Divide between the North and South, > > We are sick and tired of the "digital divide" problem. The REAL problem > is how are we going to use the Strategic opportunities offered by the > ICTs to close the SOCIAL divide. And avoid digital divide initiatives > that deepen the social divide. This is not a semantic problem, but a > vision that encompasses all of our objectives, methods and actions, to > use ICTs for "sustainable human development". ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
