1) What exactly is the Digital Divide?
According to Andy Carvin, “In the most basic sense, the digital divide is the ever-growing gap between those people and communities who have access to information technology and those who do not " (Carvin, 2000, p. 1). More specifically, the economic gap is between the people who have access to the internet, and technology that facilitates that access, and those who don’t have access. Whether it is because of socioeconomic status or race, it is only these people that are being represented and contributing to the information available on the internet. Whether accurate or not, this allow for the projection of these people’s views, regarding people without internet, to be littered throughout the web (Carvin, 2000, p. 2). This misrepresentation can be culturally and morally devastating for the effected people. Access to the internet and technology is not the underlying problem that has created the digital divide. Mark Warschauer writes, technology access is facilitated by a "complex array of factors encompassing physical, digital, human, and social resources"(Warschauser, 2002, p. 5). These underline the ability for a person to acquire the technology to access the internet, the ability of the internet to meet the demands of all users regardless of language, the degree of education an individual has had , and the types of meaningful social interactions that they can have online with their peers (Warschauser 2002, p. 11).
2) Essentially, the Macintosh metaphor attempted to illustrate " the privileged position of standard English as the language of choice or default, and, in this way, contribute to the tendency to ignore, or even erase, the cultures of non-English Language speakers..."(Selfe & Selfe 1994, p. 488).Within the lines of the Macintosh metaphor, I think that a hardware store is also relevant. The layout of the store is very linear and neat. All the inventory within the store is grouped within its specific use. This makes for easy access for the mechanic or carpenter. Screws, or other hardware, is grouped together by length and placed into long rows. All the hardware is measured in and labeled in the standard system. Someone, a person who does not regularly work with his or her hands, who is foreign to this system will be hard pressed to find a metric screw that is needed. While the rest of the world uses one standard system of measurement, the United States insists on creating its own measuring scale. Whether the outdated ideals of American superiority toward other cultures and the way they think, or the drive for a different system, America has not adopted the world standard. This metaphor may work better because it illustrates America's resistance to change, especially toward not just one race or group, but the rest of the intellectual world.
References
Carvin, A. (2000). Mind the gap: The digital divide as the civil rights issue of the new millennium.
Retrieved August 31, 2010 from http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/Jan00/carvin.htm
Warschauer, M. (2002). Reconceptualizing the digital divide. Retrieved August 31, 2010 from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/967/888
Selfe, C, & Selfe, R. (1994). The Politics of the interface: power and its exercise in electronic.. Electronic Contact Zones College Composition and Communication, 45(4), Retrieved from http://www.paulmuhlhauser.org/475/Readings/interface.pdf
Petersen, this is outstanding--you have gotta share this idea with the class--"While the rest of the world uses one standard system of measurement, the United States insists on creating its own measuring scale. Whether the outdated ideals of American superiority toward other cultures and the way they think, or the drive for a different system, America has not adopted the world standard."
ReplyDeleteThe same sort of thing is seen with other standards. Larger companies tend to mix the proprietary with standards, creating separate, slightly/largely conflicting, incomplete implementations. Consider what has gone on with web standards, Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe. It's the web equivalent of our pathologically strange refusal to use a proper measuring system :)
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