SV: [governance] IS THE DIGITAL DIVIDE A PHANTOM?

Remmy Nweke remmyn at yahoo.co.uk
Sat Jul 28 18:51:31 EDT 2007


  Hi Kwasi and friends,
  My thinking is that no matter what, I still believe that digital divide is not a phantom. Although it is apparent that the divide may not be closed or abridged to  a greater extent but it is a motivation for most governments of developing countries to wake up and do what they should ordinarily do in terms of infrastructure provisions.
  For some of us, it is a call on developing countries to live up to standard prescribed ovally by the developed nations of the world, even though there may not be any clear cut line as to when this divide would be closed or near it, it is expected that by bringing the concept to the fore of governance, leaders especially in least developing countries would be 'inwardly' worried and try to catch up.
  Economically speaking, it could be phantom, but for most social advocates, it is not because it gives hope to those at the bottom of the tunnel that one day their lives would be improved upon, but we must not forget that as one economies improve his demands increases as well as and there is the law anywhere that states that those advanced countries of today should be static in development and wait for less developed to meet up before forging ahead.

kwasi boakye-akyeampong <kboakye1 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote: Norbert, you wrote:
"This of course needs to be funded somehow, but as
soon as this has been achieved, all visually disabled people
everywhere will be able to benefit from this ...".

I disagree with the underlined bit because in the developing (under-developed) regions, even the non-visually impaired are struggling to have access to computers. Internet access is even worse. So for the visually impaired it is worse for them in developing countries.

Believe me, the digital divide issue is worse than we make it sound. Most  of the solutions we propose are just not practicable in the deprived regions. They are models fit for the developed countries. For instance, most developing countries are struggling with electricity supply even in the cities. Most rural communities are not connected to the national electricity grid. So bridging the digital divide goes beyond providing them with computers. 

Greetings,
Kwasi

Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote: Kicki Nordstrom  wrote:

> World Blind Union has tried to negotiate with the producer of screen
> reading programs, that we from industrial could pay more to reduce
> the price for customer in developing countries. But this was not
> possible due to business tradition.

I think this calls for the development of a good screen reader  program
as Free Software.  This of course needs to be funded somehow, but as
soon as this has been achieved, all visually disabled people
everywhere will be able to benefit from this, and will be able to
always use the newest version without big extra costs, without being
contrained by the "business traditions" of a profit-oriented company.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow                     http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG  http://SIUG.ch
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