[governance] ACCESS TO ICT/ INTERNET

[michael gurstein]

Norbert and all, can I suggest that we be rather more careful with our
terminology... 

The term "Digital Divide" has become something of a "portmanteau" and
tends to mean whatever the user wishes it to mean -- all the way from
simple available access (the 5? kilometers from a pay telephone as the
standard means for defining telephone access being transferred to
something similar for the Internet) to various forms of "divides" being
conflated within the Digital Divide notion (literacy divides, financial
divides, disability divides etc.etc.) to actually being concerned with
how the access is used.

The term itself has been quite severely critiqued by myself
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue8_12/gurstein/index.html among
others... (I choose to talk about "effective use", but others talk about
"real use", "practical applications" and so on.

In any case, and again, providing Internet or ICT access without the
parallel availability of the range of supporting attributes by means of
which this access can be translated into beneficial applications and
uses is to my mind roughly the equivalent of saying "let them eat
cake"...

It seems to me finally, that the issue of simple "access" is one that
might most usefully be left to the commercial and governmental
stakeholders to advocate (the commercial folks deriving commercial
benefits from this "access" and the governments gaining through such
"access" the ability to cut costs without (in theory) reducing
services),  although we should of course support this. 

We as CS on the other hand, should be much more concerned to ensure that
this "access" is turned into real benefits (effective uses) for those
who are currently not receiving such benefits, while in many cases, at
least indirectly, absorbing some of its costs.

MG 

-----Original Message-----
From: Norbert Bollow [mailto:nb at bollow.ch] 
Sent: September 17, 2007 2:34 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: [governance] ACCESS TO ICT/ INTERNET
e

kwasi boakye-akyeampong <kboakye1 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Would you share your opinions on the following question, those who 
> think it's a silly question should ignore it and accept my apologies.
> 
> - Since some would rightly argue that the digital divide exists even
> - in advanced countries, should we judge ourselves by the efforts
> - (money, resources, etc.) or the results (the impact our efforts
> - have made)?
> 
> The answer may seem obvious depending where one would choose to argue 
> from but I need your opinions.

How about a rating system from 0 to 10 e.g. as follows (with
subdivisions between the points such as e.g. "0.5" when there is both
widespread non-awareness and denial but nothing else
happening)

0 - hardly anyone is aware of the need to address digital divide issues
1 - existence or importance of the main digital divide issues is denied
2 - some money is spend on addressing digital divide issues without any
    serious measurement and evaluation of results
3 - some serious efforts with evaluation of results are made, but there
    is no clarity about whether sufficient progress is made that it can
    be expected that with the current level of effort ans current
    strategies, the main "digital divide" problems will eventually get
    solved
4 - the fundamental economic causes of the "digital divide" problems
    are well-understood and adequate strategies for solving the
    problems have been developed and empirically verified
5 - adequate strategies for solving the problems have been politically
    accepted and adequate funding has been made available
6 - the "digital divide" problems have been verifiedly solved in some
    of the areas under consideration, and in the remaining areas at
    least serious efforts are made
7 - the "digital divide" problems have been verifiedly solved in most
    of the areas under consideration, and in the remaining areas the
    remaining obstacles are well-understood and are getting effectively
    addressed.
8 - the "digital divide" problems have been verifiedly solved in 90%
    of the areas under consideration, and in the remaining areas the
    remaining obstacles are well-understood and are getting effectively
    addressed.
9 - the "digital divide" problems have been verifiedly solved in all
    of the areas under consideration, and strategies are being developed
    for preventing this category of problems from resurfacing 10 -not
only have the "digital divide" problems have been verifiedly
    solved in all of the areas under consideration, but also there are
    adequate strategies and programs in place (with adequate long-term
    assurance of funding) for preventing this category of problems
    from resurfacing

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                      http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org
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