Digital Divides

Digital Divides is the 'split between those who have access to digital tools and the internet and those who don’t'.

One of the main digital divides in the global divide which is the inequality between different countries, some countries not having access to the internet or even the telephone. Having access to the telephone has long been taken for granted in the western parts of the world. ‘Telecommunications expert at the United Nations and elsewhere has expressed concern about the impact on world economic development of many countries’ staggeringly low access even to the telephone’ (Couldry, N. 2000:186). More access needs to be made to the countries with no connection because in 1995 ‘more than half of the world’s population lives more than two hours away from a telephone’ (Couldry, N. 2000:186).

Living in today’s economy it’s hard to believe that there’s a huge part of the world with no access to the telephone or internet. We don’t think twice about how lucky we are to have all the technology just available to all of us for a small fee, but, with what we can do with the internet and all the information we have access to, the small fee is nothing. There are two main divisions in the divide, firstly there’s the global divide and the secondly there’s the social divide. The global divide is between different countries, number of computers, website hosts etc. The social divide is concerned with who had access and who doesn’t to those societies’ web resources. There’s the gap between the rich and the poor but there’s the divide within poorer nations with who can afford online access. With the global divide its how many phone lines there are and modems with the number of web hosts. With the social divide it’s more about ‘how individuals in the same society differ in how they access, and use, the internet’. (Couldry, N 2000:189).

There are different ways of overcoming the digital divide but a simple phone line in the middle of a poor country is no solution to the ‘digital poverty’. ‘New thinking was emerged which concentrated on providing social forms of access to phone links such like village centres in Bangladesh, ‘telecenters’ for both phone and internet access’ (Couldry, N. 2000:189). We have to look closely at peoples gender, income, race and location to access people internet use, what they use it for, how often and where, whether we are heavy internet users or light internet users.

In the world we live in, we assume our internet access and availability is normal and almost standard and we don’t think about the other countries where access is almost impossible. We have so much information at our finger tips to do with what we please, I think with the introduction of things like internet cafes it will help people stuck in the social divides, being able to have access to the internet and having access to what they need, there are solutions to the problems the digital divide can be overcome.

Couldry, N (2000) 'The Digital Divide' in Gaunlett, D. & Horsley, R. (eds) Web. Studies (second edition), London: Arnold.