What is the digital divide?
In B.C.’s smaller towns and communities, Internet connection speed and level of service is vastly different than in larger centers. The “Digital Divide” is the gap between those British Columbians with access to the new technology – including skills training, computers and broadband Internet access – and those without. Currently, 92 percent of British Columbians have access to broadband service. The remaining eight percent are in rural and remote areas.
The digital divide refers to the gap between people who possess regular access to technology, (such as computers and their related functions like ability to get on the Internet), and those who do not have this access. The term originated in the 1990s and was much used in early days by the US President Clinton’s Administration to discuss what could be done about bridging this gap. There are many ways to look at or consider the digital divide. For people like President Clinton, the divide separated the “haves and have-nots” within the US. Other people evaluate how a perceived divide may affect countries, populations, or races. Internet and computer use has undoubtedly increased in the United States and the digital divide may be smaller within certain populations. However, it remains a fact that poorer people may not be able to afford technology, and poorly funded schools aren’t always able to offer regular use of technology to their students. In contrast, students in middle class and upp
The digital divide is the chasm separating the haves and have-nots in digital technology. On one side are people who can afford or who have access to computers, a high-speed broadband connection and the plethora of services from online banking to social networking to blogging. On the other side of the equation are people who cannot afford the technology, cannot get broadband access because of their location, or who have learning or cultural limitations to using the technology. There are many digital divides: Rural and urban; poor and rich, African-American and white; old and young; disabled and able; developing nation and developed nation. All these factors have been studied and solutions have been debated for years. In fact, Martin Luther King Jr. talked about such a divide in one of his last speeches four days before he died in 1968: There can be no gainsaying about the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today…That is, a technological revolution with the impa
Computer and telecommunication technologies have become part of the daily functioning of businesses, educational institutions, and families in the U.S. over the last twenty years. Awareness of technology, especially computer and telecommunication technologies, as a tool with the potential to improve people s lives, has been growing in the last decade. While this awareness and rapid expansion of technologies are beneficial in many ways, it also raises sobering concerns about equitable access to technology in under-served communities and sectors. To date, the digital divide debate has turned on the concept of access, that is, providing access to those who have no computer or telephone and, thus, cannot enter the Internet realm at school or home. Lack of access to networked technology will result in a substantial segment of society having neither the skills nor the means to participate in the progressively more “knowledge-based” U.S. economy. The concept of “access” encompasses the acquis
