Blog #10: The Digital Divide

This week's chapters we're still a little difficult to understand at some points, but much easier than most of our other readings. I agree with the authors' point of view that social policies like those related to welfare, education, health care, etc. are all interconnected when addressing the problems of people who are technologically illiterate. It's more efficient to bring ICT resources down to the level of the users rather than the other way around. There are so many opportunities for users, but they must go through universities or other institutions to even access ICT resources which clearly shows that a digital divide still exists.

The focus group for the authors was poor women (usually with children) that they thought they'd be able to help through this project. Related to their focus group, they included a 1999 report of disparities between the "haves" and the "have nots" about household patterns of Internet use. I think these disparities still exist, obviously not as great, but still present in inner-city areas, minorities, and lower-income households. As for expected outcomes, I think it was a good goal to want to introduce the women to ICT resources and have them become civically engaged, but I don't know how reasonable it was to expect it to actually happen. I think all things are possible, but in time. For example - I tihnk the belief that ICTs have the potential to change people’s engagement with government is possible, but it's not something that can happen overnight.

I think the main goal in projects similar to this should be to overcome physical accessibility barriers as well as social capital barriers. In other words, people need to have the ability to afford a computer (or have a close location to access them) plus the skills necessary to navigate it and the Internet. People need these skills because "increasingly in our society, technological and basic literacies are a prerequisite to accessing health, education, jobs, and decisionmaking processes." Little access plus low skills plus low information is a vicious circle that just exacerbates the problem poor women face. Breaking the cycle brings us one step close to narrowing the digital divide. But we can't just provide computers and then take ourselves out of the equation - we need to provide training and assistance until the people feel confident in their skills to be on their own.

I've been directly affected by the early push for computers and the Internet in libraries and public schools and I can honestly agree with the authors - we were taught how to use certain features of a computer, but we weren't really taught how to navigate the Internet and the device ourselves. We were basically just droppped in the water and told to swim. On another note, I liked that the projects were able to be changed as the situation changed - in the reading from last week the projects discussed were pretty much set in stone and didn't allow for any input or molding from the community. I feel these quotes are related to this issue and our class:

• There's a "need to recognize how different stakeholders engaged in university collaborations determine and reflect goals, outcomes, values, and organizational changes (Kinpaisby 2008). The dialogue also emphasizes that communiversity concerns often center on the power dynamics between universities and community partners but fail to reflect the university as a community with its own particular set of constituents, resource inequalities, and service demands" (Kinpaisby 2008).
• "These factors add up to blurred boundaries for identifying start and end dates, goals and goal attainment measures, resource needs and expenditures, and ultimately the sustainability of the collaborations."
• "We have advocated the position that public and policy discourses should rely on the representation of multiple constituencies with an explicit understanding of the power imbalances represented by the need for the collaboration in the first place."
• "Our use of these theoretical frameworks draws on the notion that research should have practical applications for society at multiple scales – and that knowledge is situated within the experiences of each of the collaborators."