The Digital Divide will not be Inevitable

What is the 'Digital Divide' exactly? Wikipedia defines it as the "gap between those people wtih effective acess to digital and information technology and those without access to it." In an article entitled 'Is a Computer worth a Thousand Books? Internet Access and the Changing Role of Public Libraries' Chaudhuri and Flamm give a statistic on Internet access in Australia, with "household penetration having now surpassed 70%" (2006:249-266). The internet speed divide is set to be quashed through the implementation of high-speed internet access, (taken from Daniel Koppenol's Blog). So, for our country at least, the 'digital divide' is presently non-existent with the increasing requirements of small businesses and the domestic to engage with the rest of the world and their competition in online networks.

The Digital Divide is not applicable to South Korea either, a lesser-developed nation than Australia. They have the highest rate of Internet usage in the world at the moment, which I found interesting. I found no statistics for North Korea, so yes, the 'digital divide' probably does still stick with them. As Alexandra Sidorenko and Christopher Finlay point out, "(the digital divide) relates to the inequality held between developing and industrialised nations, and the inaccessiblity of communications and information technolgies to nations that are not industrialised" ('The Digital Divide in East Asia' Sidorenko & Finlay: 1).

One argument 'for' the closing gap in the digital divide is the culture of convergence, or the 'Communications Revolution' which basically gives nations that were once without, a chance to get on board and communicate on the Internet. Communications technologies have 'shrunk the globe' according to Kacowicz, who labels this as a tenet of globalisation. As I discussed in the 'Bert and Osama' example in my first blog, the 'intensification of economic, political, social and cultural relationships' are leading to global changes in perspectives of other countries, and how we view their state affairs and where they stand on the international stage, through the actions of particpipants which are passed through different forms of media. We may see the 'digital divide' on a case-by-case basis, where some nations still have no access to the Internet. But inevitably, it is going to happen. If you are skeptical of this, that the digital divide will eventually be diminshed to nothing, then you are not in line with the in-built trait of progress that is part of every human being. But it is never an easy road, as Martin Luther King Jr. surmises:

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable...Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrfice, suffering and struggle, the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.." Taken from here.

An interersting article entitled 'The Digital Divide: the special case of gender' illustrates how women are under-represented as users of computers and the Internet. Cooper draws research from countries across the world that all say that females know much less about information technology than males, and at an early age seem 'anxious' when it comes to using a computer. I think that gender stereotypes are a non-event in the 21st century. From my own experience working in uni labs and other computer facilities, there seems to be more females than males accessing computers and the Internet. When i was part of the social networking tool Myspace, the number of female profiles vastly outweighed the number of male profiles. It is a fact that females have a more advanced conversation system than us fellas, and i'd be inclined to think that females would be better adapted to 'virtual communication' than males too because of this 'genetic trait.' So i think if the divide is put into the context of gender, there is no obvious form of segregation in day-to-day use of computers.