By Minamur Chowdhury, University of British Columbia, ETEC540 Assignment, December 2005
Introduction
Currently, the dividing lines between the rich and the poor, between the North and the South, are the digital texts and technology networks. If "digital divide" is maybe an over-used phrase, it does represent a reality that cannot be ignored. Fifteen per cent of the world's population controls around 80 per cent of the world's telephones and about 90 per cent of access points to the Internet, and they are 13 times more likely to own personal computers than the rest. And the rest are the 85 per cent of the world's population living in low and lower-middle income countries.
Unlike the divide between rich and poor the 'Digital Divide' among nations is a growing global and social problem that never had a place meaningfully in the reality only a couple of decades ago. Therefore, it is still in the form that is manageable comparing with other stubborn global and social problems. There is good possibility to achieve greater result if more weight is given on to this particular problem rather than fighting world’s other never - ending problems. By mobilizing resources to target fighting the growing ‘digital divide’ as a priority, actually gives poorer part of the world a unique opportunity to reshape and rebuild a social structures in the process that would be based in a new 'information society' which would then automatically spark developments in all other problematic areas of the world like chain reactions. Genuine effort to close the gap between digitally divided communities in poorer countries will pave ways for not only 'digital opportunities,' for many but also will result in a 'technology breakthrough’ to overcome other problems that widens divide among nations. Poverty is one of such social divides. But, I hope and that the process to create a world wide digitally connected global society will open up new opportunities to those living in the poorest and most isolated regions of the world. It will offer a voice to those who in the past have often been unheard and forgotten. The challenge of narrowing or even closing the 'digital divide' is very doable and the success would benefit parties living in the both ends of the great divide. Think of a new digitalized connected world society that would reach remote villages of the Amazon jungles, or the inhabitants around Himalayan Mountains, not only current world information will be available to the local people who could automatically become digitally literate in the process, but also to the other end of the world who could learn about the cultural treasures found before only in a few libraries. The Challenge to find ways to ensure that the enormously powerful tools that we now possess, in the form of ‘texts and technologies’, are used to create better standards of life with larger degree of freedom in every corner of the world. Greater access to information and communication technologies can improve the lives of farmers and assist micro-entrepreneurs. It may prevent AIDS and other communicable diseases, promote women's equality and foster environmental protection.
Building Digital Infrastructure
In the big picture, the common path to overcome the technology divide is to work on to build a IT infrastructure linking villages and communities, universities and primary and secondary schools, scientific and research centers, public libraries, cultural centers, museums, post offices, railway stations and archives, health centers and hospitals, and local and central government departments. Other targets include improving the availability of information in all languages on the Internet, and ensuring that everyone in the world has at least a periodical access to digital texts and communications. As a result, local communities and governments alike, with digital links, and governance through it, will create a natural and an enthusiast trend which will lead the drive of developments in all other underdeveloped fields.
Although, we know the digital technology is shrinking the world and same time it is creating a divide where huge percentage of the world population without any access to digital world, and it is of little value if the text that it contains is almost exclusively in a language one don't understand, or if it fails to deal with the life and death questions that affect their society. An obvious solution for that will be for the part of local governments and educational institutions to develop local contents and same time for the part of the world body to put in place the technical requirements in order to facilitate the presence and use of all world languages on the Internet.
Digital Divisions
Although, there is some good news, the number of Internet users in many countries in Asia using their own language has grown considerably in recent years, the problem remains in some other countries where one cannot use computers without knowing a particular language. According to the report from U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in 2001, only a small proportion of Chinese citizens had access to the Internet. Today China has some 520 Internet service providers and 600 Internet content providers in their own language.
There is some progress in the African continent as well, which has traditionally been very low on the connectivity scale. At the end of 2003, there were around 14 million Internet users in Africa, up from just 4.5 million in 2000. Although the common language for content in many parts of Asia and Africa are in English, it is clear that the number of Internet users in Africa is growing as fast as anywhere else in the world. South Africa accounts for one quarter of African Internet users, and North Africa now accounts for 35 per cent of the total.
As we can see, the world is making progress in getting the world on-line; there is still a huge and disturbing content divide. Most of the globe's Internet hosts are based in industrial countries, and most of the content is still produced in, and for, Western countries, in Western languages. Part of the developing world's answer to this must lie in generating nations’ own information, which requires protecting freedom of expression. As we know Information and freedom go together, the spread of information technology has already had a direct impact on the degree of accountability and transparency that governments around the world must deliver if they are to survive.
"When e-learning products begin to penetrate the market, they usually do so by appealing to immediate, often very local, needs. Eventually no doubt, there can be a merging of interests and products. In the beginning, however, it is differentiation and specialization along lines defined by national cultures and local proclivities that matter most." (Zemsky & Massey, 2004, p. 60).
As the quote above suggested, building a market ruled open society with localized digital content is the most desirable scenario to create a real digital demand for local population. Yet, this may not eliminate the digital divide totally but right at this moment empowering information society should be the social, economic and, even political priority in poorer countries.
If it succeeds in meeting this scenario, a market model with local demand for localized digital content will grow and multiply, ultimately lead to a world which will be a “fair market ruled based digital society”. The world then would become a much more a better place than today. There will be no visible text and technology divide.
Unfortunately, technology is wrongly considered as a rather luxurious commodity for the needy by the local Governments and NGOs.
Spending money for health, education, housing or other projects -- many of which have equal or greater merit but the nature of their funding means that development money spent on technology is not used for health, education, housing or other projects -- many of which have equal or greater merit. Often, technology is seen as an end, rather than a means to an end. But overwhelming focus cannot be always on buying computers, and not on teacher training, curriculum design or actually improving learning. Without clear objectives, it is difficult to measure results.
Thanks to the scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab unveiled the prototype of a basic, easy-to-use computer that could be mass-produced for less than $100 each. These a brightly colored, damage-resistant, super-inexpensive computer that could help gives children in poorer nations real hope for a better future.
These computers should be very useful to children in poor and developing countries, helping to fill the gap left by the lack of books, videos and other educational materials - not to mention access to the Internet. Among its features: a hand crank for generating power to run the laptop in places where electricity is not readily available. Nations such as India, Brazil and Thailand have expressed interest in the devices. This must be for the good and could be applied as an essential item for education and may make its way to one of the top priority item to be considered for distribution among the citizen living in the other side of the great divide. If that happen this could change everything so the "World Wide" Web no longer will only be "belong" to the people of the opposing end.
The Technology Barrier
We live in a world where half of the world's population still do not have a phone. A quarter of the world population has not even made a call. Barriers to technological development are exactly the same as the barriers to any economic developments such as market restrictions, lack of contract law, state controls, customs duties, bureaucracy, and corruption and so on. India provides some lights these days. The country's private software programmers and call centers compete fiercely with each other, which, combined with light taxation and the absence of heavy regulations, have resulted in world class IT and service industries. Through market-based competition, sensible regulation, an unfounded respect for private local and foreign investments and the rule of law that promotes confidence in entrepreneurs seeking to make investments, entrepreneurs can then begin to cater to the demands of local and foreign consumers. (Knowledge for Development, World Bank Report, http://web.worldbank.org/
The term "literacy" evokes the concept of reading and writing, and some writers equate computer programming with literacy. Other writers see reading and writing programs as only one part of the concept. In my opinion defining the scope and substance of teacher training needed to integrate computing into schools. The specific skills and knowledge required to make teachers ‘computer literate’ remain undefined even in many countries in the developed world.
Instructional technology and the World Wide Web offer powerful teaching resources that provide educators with a limitless wealth of information and shared professional knowledge. Instead of spending time mastering instructional technology, teacher could simply guide the process by knowing the rules but not necessary skilled in detailed usages. Similarly, I suggest teacher act as the caretakers or modulator of the technology and let students master their subject of interest of their own in their preferred direction relying on the vast online resources at this time. It will take time before teachers could make the needed adjustments and developments to their new teaching philosophy and arrive at a middle ground where they feel comfortable and start applying constructivist teaching philosophy to create meaningful learning experiences for their students.
Does Globalization Help?
I agree with the functionalists and I like the functionalists. I like the following quote taken from ETEC511, Unit 3. It does backs up my argument here as well as elsewhere in this paper.
“A functionalist is preoccupied with how things work (rather than with why they work and whose interests are served). Functionalists are interested in exploiting technology for efficiency. There would be considerable discussion about cost/benefit analyses, doing more with less and the financial rewards of conducting education online. Functionalists often have an uncritical (sometimes unwitting) commitment to extant power relations and are prone to see technology as neutral.” (UBC ETEC511, “Discourses that construct Technology”, retrieved from http://www.webct.ubc.ca/SCRIPT/etec511_det/scripts/serve_home)
The transition to globalization is filled with obvious opportunities and exciting challenges for the entire world. Globalization is a subject that tends to make some people in the West a bit in low spirit. However, through the information technology revolution that is the Internet, the world has shrunk. Therefore, the best and brightest in both sides of the digital divide can compete against each other in fields such as engineering and computer technology, although most do it for much less when it comes to dollars and cents (for what it costs in the West).
Moreover, one tenth of the elites in the West who control so much of their nations’ wealth are now looking at the world much differently than their predecessors. After all, money is made and spent as easily in India as it is right here in Canada. It is probably does not matter too much for them if the quality of life slips a bit for a while before the experts here can readjust with other fields. We may see this continues to grow as many more of the emerging new nations will join in this global village market to compete even with India or China.
The dilemma of the West is obviously caused by the concerns of one group of professionals who are threatened by outsourcing, while the other, mainly with mentally of global functionalist profiting from this globalization trend. But for the sake of economic growth and for economic vitality, the keys here are to maintain and compete and collaborate on a level playing field with the rest of the world. This trend might grow over time in favor of the developing nations for a while and spread the practice of outsourcing energetically beyond engineering and computer technology, thus contributing to narrow down the digital divide in some extend.
The effect of the global village market will truly felt when outsourcing will be practiced in many other areas such as education, law and even in medical industries but this will not yet eliminate the digital divide entirely. The mathematical equations of population quantity between India and European Union or China and North America do not match up so when it comes to leveling the digital divide. Besides even when things go better for China and India, there are other nations which will come to play the global village market and take some market share and close some of their digital divides.
The fascinating story of a company called Digital Divide Data in Cambodia is one of confluence between outsourcing, international entrepreneurship, information technology, and social enterprise.
In the United States, however globalization critics and non-functionalist groups, points out that the companies pays significantly less than the U.S. minimum wage. Therefore, morally this story is not so inspiring.
There are more of these stories, I know of some organizations that have sent simple but time-consuming data-entry projects to developing countries. New York City police tickets have been processed in Ghana, Lexis-Nexis articles have been entered in China, and insurance claims have been keyed-in in India. Many see India's success as a paradigm of international development based on IT services. Technology based development is faster, cheaper, better for the environment and more flexible than traditional resource or manufacturing development strategies. According the World Bank, the outsourced IT services market is estimated to represent $120 billion worldwide in annual spending and is growing at 20% per year. Within IT services, the total market for data processing and network services is more than $290 million, and growing five percent annually. (Sources retrieved on Nov., 25th 2005 from http://www.harbus.org)
If this is the way to help narrowing down the digital divide then it seems that the world must give in to a vision of a future where the resources of the world economy has to be shared. It will then look like a seesaw where one end gain in expense of the loss of the other end.
Cross–Cultural Text Divide
For more than three decades, international and cross-cultural marketing research has focused on the standardization versus adaptation debate, which has resulted in the popular classification of "culture-free" and "culture-bound" products. The Internet is a new channel of communication in addition to traditional media such as newspapers, radio, and TV, through which marketing communication such as advertising or public relations can be spread. Marketing may therefore depend on Internet consumption. Worldwide Internet consumption data over the last decade show remarkable national differences in the numbers of Internet users.In early 2000, for example, most Internet users still lived in North America (147.5 million), followed by Europe (91.8 million) and the Asia Pacific Basin (75.5 million) according to diverse sources (NUA Internet Surveys, retrieved from http://nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/index.html; CIA World Factbook—http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html).
In early 2005, the percentage of the population using the Internet ("active web users, at home") was, for example, in the USA, 48%, in Canada and Australia, 46%, in Sweden, 53%, in Germany, 36%, in the UK, 38%, in France, 26%, in Spain, 22%, in Japan, 29%, and in Brazil, for example, only 6% (Nielsen NetRatings, retrieved from http://www.nielsennetratings.com/news.jsp?section=dat_to).
Although those figures change continuously over time (and differences between different sources and their definitions of Internet usage exist—online access quotas, for example, are not valid indicators of real usage), there is a clear continuum of descent from high Internet usage in the (developed, western) North to low Internet usage in the (often less developed, non-western) South. The diffusion of the Internet from its country of origin, the USA, to other countries of the world depended and continues to depends on several hard factors such as technical infrastructure and income per capita, for example economic development.
This may be one reason for the Internet's differing popularity in the North and the South—that is what I mean by saying “Spaces across the Digital Divide”.
References
Hammond, K., Turner, P., & Bain, M. (2000). Internet users versus non-users: Drivers in Internet uptake. International Journal of Advertising, 19 (5), 665-680.
Lynch, E. J. 1997. "Constructivism and Distance Education." (Spring). Online: http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc703old97/spring97/7/lynch7.htm.
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2005/11/20/stories/2005112000230300.htm
Taylor, Robert P., James L. Poirot, and James D. Powell. "Computing Competencies for School Teachers." In NATIONAL COMPUTING CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, edited by Diana Harris and Beth Collison. 1980. ED 194 060.
Davis, O.T., Jr. "Liberating Learning." EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP (October 1983):58-60.
Newsweek, Issue 2006, retrieved on Nov. 25th, 2005 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10206251/site/newsweek/
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Hermeking, M. (2005). Culture and Internet consumption: Contributions from cross-cultural marketing and advertising research. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), article 10. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/hermeking.html
Culture and Internet Consumption: Contributions from Cross-Cultural Marketing and Advertising Research
ETEC511, Unit 3 Discourses that construct Technology. Retrieved from http://www.webct.ubc.ca/SCRIPT/etec511_det/scripts/serve_home