Digital Divide

What a world we live in, huh?

(Mostly) reliable information about anything and everything (including the “Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them” controversy) are at your fingertips on Wikipedia. Pandora and Lala let you uncover music that you’ve never heard of or that you never would possibly think you'd like. And oh, by the way, Apple’s iPad is released Saturday for a mere half-thou.

Notice that the above luxuries are just that: luxuries. They require computers (expensive), smart phones (expensive), Internet access (expensive), knowledge (expensive), etc. OK, luxuries cost money. But they're non-essential and superfluous. That’s all well and good.

But, more and more, these expensive technologies (and therefore, the resources to acquire the means to these technologies) are becoming a necessity to live and thrive in this world.

Take education for example. It’s understood that, as a computer science major, I was wholly dependent on all of this fancy technology to fulfill my degree. It’s even understandable that, at any institute of higher education, all of this is a given. But take it down a notch, to low-income primary/secondary education, and then you start getting into murky territory.

Listen to the following NPR story:



(link to article)

When students start being forced into underachievement because they simply can’t afford the means to meet their goals, while others comfortably research and write up their report on the Spanish-American War on their parents’ iMac (complete with cable internet), you’ve got a real problem.

I’m not suggesting we slam the brakes on the use of technology in educational settings. That would be backwards thinking (like a certain state Board of Education I know). But who is there to help these underprivileged students? At what point do they get help? And if they do, to what extent do they get help?

On the heels of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, this issue can’t be all that far behind. It’s a little easier to argue that healthcare is a right, and that your economical position shouldn’t interfere with that right.

But it’s not that big of a leap to say that, since access to a computer and the Internet are essential to get a decent education -- and it’s a basic right to get a good education -- that a computer and Internet access are a basic right as well? At that point, do the disadvantaged deserve help to gain this right?

Amalia Deloney from the Center for Media Justice: “There's really not a way that you can see Internet as anything other than a necessity, and it's no longer a luxury.” And that trend is only going to continue. As dependent as we are now on all this stuff, where will we be fifteen years from now?