Digital Divide:
How Technology Divides us…
DIGITALLY!
What is the Digital Divide?
• The digital divide is the difference in levels of
access to technology between diffrent groups
of people.
• For example, people in the US and other
developed nations have more access to
technology than people Africa, minorities
have less access than causations, and children
have less access than adults
History!
• The term came into use in the mid 1990s, with
Bill Clinton using in a speech in 1996.
• In the 1970s and 1980s there was a large gap
in internet access.
• 1991 bill for a "National Information
Infrastructure.” to help fight the divide
What’s good about it?
• NOTHING!
What’s bad about it?
• INEQUALITY IS INHERENTLY BAD!
What can we do to fight it?
• Laws and stuff?!
Sources
• Chayko, Mary. "Shaping the Social Landscape: Equalities,
Inequalities, Possibilities." Portable Communities: The Social
Dynamics of Online and
• Mobile Connectedness. Albany: State University of New York, 2008.
183-202.
• Rice, Mitchell F. "The Global Digital Divide." Development
Communication: Reframing the Role of the Media. Ed. Thomas L.
McPhail. Malden, MA: State Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2009. 123139.
• Sciadas, George. "The Digital Divide in Canada." Ottawa: Statistics
Canada, 2002. Retrieved Augest 31, 2009 from
http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/56F0009XIE/56F0009XIE20
02001.pdf
• (At least one of these will probably be used anyway…)