Digital Divide

There are many factors that currently attribute and associate with the "digital divide" as much of the media and educated would like to call it.  Commonly these include issues like financial status, upbringing, education, gender, and race.  These issues, though not to be ignored, are not all that attributes to the digital divide.  The terms coined for the issue attribute to it, in my opinion, just as much now as any other previous attributing factor.

If you tell someone they cannot do something or have access to something, in many cases the statement will become true.  For example, if you told a lower class black female with a non standard family unit and poorly funded education that she cannot go to college from the time she is in junior high school, she probably will not have much motivation to pursue college if it is going to be absurdly more challenging than for a white male of middle to upper class background, when both his parents attended college as well.  When you follow these trends down passed K-12 education and the girl finds out she is on one side of the "divide" and the male is on the other, motivation can become an issue.  While it is not a true divide, the terminology used to describe it creates the feeling of animosity for those on either side.  Both feel as if they've done nothing personally wrong, therefore they don't have to change anything to change the situation.  Monroe actually makes mention of this when he states that "the metaphor of a great chasm - a divide - polarizes the issue as a matter of simply having, or not having," (Monroe 5) access to technologies and benefits provided by them.

This is not to say that there is not a tough climb between the bottom of the scale the divide represents and the top by any means, but I never fail to acknowledge the power of buzz words and industry terms, and what exactly they mean to people on either side.  If you're on the have side of the divide, you have a computer, access to decent internet, potentially a cellular phone, and the ability to effectively use all of them for your daily tasks.  If you were on the complete bottom of the have not, you would probably not have a computer or even access to one, and a cellular phone would most likely be out of the question.  The amount of a climb required to get from the extreme bottom to the top of the top would require a large amount of work, and a reasonable amount of angst.  From the perspective of the top however, "looking down" if you will, being born into whatever lifestyle you were born into wasn't exactly choice (based on various religious or philosophical belief structures, maybe it was choice), nor did they necessarily do anything to further the gap.  This creates problems of animosity between the two groups when, while neither individual is directly responsible, both are asked to work harder to change it.

Andy Carvin suggests ways to "Bridg[e] the Divide" in his essay on "The Gap."   He makes some interesting points about ways to bring the playing fields together, but I think he's approaching it from the wrong angle.  The gap does not need to be bridged; the entire line needs to be smoothed.  Computers are not yet required devices, as much as many of us would think so.  Giving away free computers, even with training, does not solve the problems of society and background that are also associated with the issue of computer equality.  It puts a band aid on the issue and lets people say "hey look, I've done something," but very little else.  I personally think that the only way to solve the growing technological equality issues is to start with base level education, in the schools, to emphasize the importance of computing in our futures, and the basic understanding of them.  Without starting at a base level I feel very little will be achieved for the long-term equality of the issue.