[governance] ACCESS TO ICT/ INTERNET

[Norbert Bollow]

Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

What I like about the term "digital divide" is precisely that it
expresses this discontent with a situation in which those who are
already disadvantaged unfairly become even more disadvantaged,
_without_ implying a particular model for describing and trying to
address the specifics of the problem.

I think that it's important to separate this emotional side of the
issue from the needed scientifically fact-oriented processes for
addressing it.

I often put "digital divide" in quotation marks (as e.g. in the
posting that you replied to, see below) in order to emphasize that I
consider it an emotional term rather than a precisely-defined one.

By contrast, "digital solidarity" is a term which totally fails to
make this separation and which is therefore IMO totally unsuitable
as a basis for any kind of fact-oriented discussion of the issues.
Nevertheless "Digital Solidarity" would be a great name e.g. for an
NGO aiming at promoting a particular set of solution strategies for
"digital divide" problems.

> 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.

I agree that it is essential to go beyond mere "access" in the sense
of being able to send and receive IP datagrams and work out precise
models for the problems that need to be solved, on the basis of
concepts like the "effective use" .

Greetings,
Norbert.

> -----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


-- 
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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