Re: [DDN] [Fwd: [Politech] World Bank report questions size of "digital divide" [econ]]
> > >THerefore all these talks about digital divide are for people who HAS > >digital avilable to them because they do not face many of the 'divides' > >mentioned above ... so how can we understand what the needs of these people? > >Furthermore, even if we build a teleceter for them and they can access to > >the rest of the world and get a PhD in something ... what good would that be > >for someone in a fishing village? It would be just like building an ultra > >modern hospital without providing ultra modern doctors and nurses ... My > >question during one of EU NGOs workshop --- providing scholarship to educate > >people from Africa and other countries is noble, BUT why give them the > >education they cannot use back in their own countries? > > > > > Exactly - context! > Wow! Then - should they stay in the fishing village, or should they take that education and move into a field that doesn't currently exist locally, exactly because there are no local people with the education to do it locally? Would that not benefit the development of the country? Or should they get just enough education to stay in the fishing village and catch more and more fish to pay for the foreign consultants who will come to do the work that they would have been able to do if they had the oportuinity for education? What education would not be useful to a developing country? Specific training in equipment that is not yet available, maybe that wouldn't be immediately useful, but then training and education are very different things. Jacqueline Morris www.carnivalondenet.com T&T Music and videos online ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
Re: [DDN] [Fwd: [Politech] World Bank report questions size of "digital divide" [econ]]
I never seems to be able to post to DDN ... I am going to give it one more try ... reading the analysis by Taran and others, I have to agree there are TOO MANY DIVIDES and not just digital. Read the email from Declan, one can just understand why this world has so many divides. When World Bank stated the digital divide is 'closer', what do they mean? Does it mean there are more computers sold and bought? By by whom? I have someone in Indonesia complained to me that 100 PC sent to the country for the Tsunami efforts just "VANISHED' without a trace. Now even if there is no all the 'divides' there is still one big divide -- those with POWER to take away the 100 PC, and those literally standing on the other side of the import clearance fence. And of course the Indonesian governmnet is putting extrodinatry import tax on PC and any so called 'digital equipments'. Including when the goods are for NGOs purposes (not sure if it is resolved now) ... The problem with most of the members of DDN (that I happened to read here) is they MIGHT have the good fortune to be born in the USA or other countries that are, as Declan suggested, that have all the good governance etc. THerefore it is difficult for them to really understand what it means to be cut-off because of religion, race, nationalities, citizenships, migrant status etc. etc. etc. AND most of all language ... and of course MONEY ... 100 USD per month for some is a sneeze. But even in a country such as Malaysia which is a modern and very well developed if compared to some countries in Africa for example, with 100 local money I can have very nice meals for 10 persons or more ... THerefore all these talks about digital divide are for people who HAS digital avilable to them because they do not face many of the 'divides' mentioned above ... so how can we understand what the needs of these people? Furthermore, even if we build a teleceter for them and they can access to the rest of the world and get a PhD in something ... what good would that be for someone in a fishing village? It would be just like building an ultra modern hospital without providing ultra modern doctors and nurses ... My question during one of EU NGOs workshop --- providing scholarship to educate people from Africa and other countries is noble, BUT why give them the education they cannot use back in their own countries? And do not forget ... those of use who read and write here and mostly highly educated. We have the means that's why we are here. A agreed with Taran totally that there is just so many 'divides' I just try to do what I can manage to help further things along ... I no longer belive in waiting for a big 'bang' miracles ... Since I am not sure if this posting would have problems, I will stop here. Chuck Sherwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: To All: This is the kind of "knownothing" analysis that is being generated by the World Bank report. Declan's listserv is read by many thought leaders and his analysis will contribute to the general misunderstanding and misinformation about the Digital Divide. Your comments should be addressed to him directly at the Politech email address. Chuck Sherwood Original Message Subject: [Politech] World Bank report questions size of "digital divide" [econ] Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 01:04:11 -0500 From: Declan McCullagh To: politech@politechbot.com I've never completely understood the term "digital divide." Perhaps it's mere parochialism: I live in Washington, DC and have access to DSL and cable modem connections and can purchase a T1 line. But I don't think so -- the real problem is the term "digital divide" itself. Any such "divide" is necessarily a subset of an economic divide. I have access to technological resources because the U.S. and its peer nations have stable governments, functioning court systems, not-entirely-insane tax rates, functioning bank systems, and pay some attention to property rights. That encourages investment, both domestic and foreign, and fosters an environment that lets a middle class grow and communications providers prosper. What I just described is not the situation in many parts of the world, especially Africa and perhaps portions of Latin America, that are the most vocal in demanding "Digital Solidarity Funds" paid for by tax dollars in countries that have made more sane economic choices. (This is not an accident of geography. In the early 1900s, Argentina was an economic powerhouse. Now its citizens are understandably leery of bank accounts and credit cards, thanks to past government thievery.) A recent UPI column describes the problems confronting Latin America today, thanks in large part to politicans' poor economic choices: http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050211-033722-6932r.htm In other words, it's a bit silly to talk about the "digital divide" without also addressing the underlying problems of broken court systems, mil
RE: [DDN] [Fwd: [Politech] World Bank report questions size of "digital divide" [econ]]
I think that this issue about the terminology is valid, although I disagree with the characterization that the issue is purely economic. Paul DiMaggio, Eszter Hargittai, Coral Celeste and Steven Shafer's paper "Digital Inequality: From Unequal Access to Differentiated Use" goes into the issue of the messiness of the term "digital divide". Instead they argue for the adoption of the term "digital inequality". I think that the idea has merit. http://www.eszter.com/research/c05-digitalinequality.html Kelvin Wong Department of Computer Science University of Victoria Victoria, British Columbia, Canada My Blog on Aboriginal People and Technology http://nativetech.blogspot.com/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chuck Sherwood Sent: March 1, 2005 5:48 AM To: Digital Divide Subject: [DDN] [Fwd: [Politech] World Bank report questions size of "digital divide" [econ]] To All: This is the kind of "knownothing" analysis that is being generated by the World Bank report. Declan's listserv is read by many thought leaders and his analysis will contribute to the general misunderstanding and misinformation about the Digital Divide. Your comments should be addressed to him directly at the Politech email address. Chuck Sherwood Original Message Subject:[Politech] World Bank report questions size of "digital divide" [econ] Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 01:04:11 -0500 From: Declan McCullagh To: politech@politechbot.com I've never completely understood the term "digital divide." Perhaps it's mere parochialism: I live in Washington, DC and have access to DSL and cable modem connections and can purchase a T1 line. But I don't think so -- the real problem is the term "digital divide" itself. Any such "divide" is necessarily a subset of an economic divide. I have access to technological resources because the U.S. and its peer nations have stable governments, functioning court systems, not-entirely-insane tax rates, functioning bank systems, and pay some attention to property rights. That encourages investment, both domestic and foreign, and fosters an environment that lets a middle class grow and communications providers prosper. ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
Re: [DDN] [Fwd: [Politech] World Bank report questions size of "digital divide" [econ]]
Declan McCullagh writes In other words, it's a bit silly to talk about the "digital divide" without also addressing the underlying problems of broken court systems, military rule, confiscatory government policies, and so on that these nations have yet to address. Solving those problems would go a long way to solving any "digital divide" that still remains. Chuck Sherwood responds: This is the kind of "knownothing" analysis that is being generated by the World Bank report. Declan's listserv is read by many thought leaders and his analysis will contribute to the general misunderstanding and misinformation about the Digital Divide. Chuck, I am not sure I see your point? And, if I read Declan's post correctly - or make some rough assumptions? - it could well be that the economic gulf has gotten wider while the digital gulf has gotten more narrow. The metrics of determination are of course difficult, but let's assume that one of the metrics of "digital prosperity" is how many people are within walking distance of a computer connected to the Net? If we don't talk "trained people who know how to use the computer" and if we don't talk about "trained people who can use the computer to improve their lives" then, from that narrow perspective, the digital divide might have improved greatly in the last few years. i.e. a whole lot more people are now within walking distance of being Net connected, yet many (the bulk?) have unchanged economic situations. In other words, one gulf got smaller; and the other gulf didn't change - or might even have gotten bigger. It may take many, many years to provide solidly documented studies that support the idea that when the digital divide is small, the chances of upward economic growth is likely. Yet, even then, we may get lots of chicken and egg caveats. Sometime back I told the story of a Horacio Alger Taiwanese who made it big in the chicken business. Underpinning his success was use of superior chicken growing technology; but underpinning that was the message that if his customers didn't keep the coops clean, no amount of brilliant technology would fatten up their wallets. Isn't that what Declan was getting at? That the easy part was the technology. The hard part was good governance. Are we completely sure that once a society has a narrow digital gulf, that good governance will follow? John Hibbs http://www.bfranklin.edu/johnhibbs ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
Re: [DDN] [Fwd: [Politech] World Bank report questions size of "digital divide" [econ]]
Cindy Lemcke-Hoong wrote: >I never seems to be able to post to DDN ... I am going to give it one more try >... > >reading the analysis by Taran and others, I have to agree there are TOO MANY >DIVIDES and not just digital. > >Read the email from Declan, one can just understand why this world has so many >divides. When World Bank stated the digital divide is 'closer', what do they >mean? Does it mean there are more computers sold and bought? By by whom? > > Actually, they used teledensity and other studies. On the surface, the report is very interesting and promising. But where the data came from is something I still have to look at. I'll add, too, that it's easy for anyone to be critical of such a paper because new papers are released spontaneously and at odd times (apparently people writing these papers aren't communicating as much as they could). The Reuters article looked like a bad case of sensationalistic journalism, really. The report is much more balanced. Even the press release is more balanced. > >I have someone in Indonesia complained to me that 100 PC sent to the country >for the Tsunami efforts just "VANISHED' without a trace. Now even if there is >no all the 'divides' there is still one big divide -- those with POWER to take >away the 100 PC, and those literally standing on the other side of the import >clearance fence. And of course the Indonesian governmnet is putting >extrodinatry import tax on PC and any so called 'digital equipments'. >Including when the goods are for NGOs purposes (not sure if it is resolved >now) ... > Yes. Sri Lanka had a news blackout as well, as I recall. This is where I hope ARCTX will come in, if I can ever sit still long enough to work on that. When it rains, it pours. :-( >The problem with most of the members of DDN (that I happened to read here) is >they MIGHT have the good fortune to be born in the USA or other countries that >are, as Declan suggested, that have all the good governance etc. > Well, there are a few Americans who might argue 'good governance'. Deficit per capita instead of GNP/GDP per capita is an eye opening statistic. > THerefore it is difficult for them to really understand what it means to be > cut-off because of religion, race, nationalities, citizenships, migrant > status etc. etc. etc. > I'll disagree here. I've lived in both worlds (not just visited), and the U.S. has problems in very similar ways. The bar of technology is higher, but there is a definite lag. This goes back to the socio-economic/racial divide that Bonnie and I discussed last year. > AND most of all language ... > Big problem here, and automatic translation doesn't really cut it. For lack of something better, it is sometimes useful. But multilingualism is on the rise. Part of the reason I'll be in the Dominican Republic is to become conversant in Spanish. >and of course MONEY ... 100 USD per month for some is a sneeze. But even in a >country such as Malaysia which is a modern and very well developed if compared >to some countries in Africa for example, with 100 local money I can have very >nice meals for 10 persons or more ... > > Definitely! But this is not being leveraged as it could be. India has leveraged it to some extent, and is reaping the rewards - as well as the problems that go with it. >THerefore all these talks about digital divide are for people who HAS digital >avilable to them because they do not face many of the 'divides' mentioned >above ... so how can we understand what the needs of these people? >Furthermore, even if we build a teleceter for them and they can access to the >rest of the world and get a PhD in something ... what good would that be for >someone in a fishing village? It would be just like building an ultra modern >hospital without providing ultra modern doctors and nurses ... My question >during one of EU NGOs workshop --- providing scholarship to educate people >from Africa and other countries is noble, BUT why give them the education they >cannot use back in their own countries? > > Exactly - context! > I no longer belive in waiting for a big 'bang' miracles ... > > I think that's really the first step. But I don't know. I don't think anyone else really knows either. Taran Rampersad [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxgazette.com http://www.a42.com http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net "Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
