“Digital Divide” is a term relating to the accessibility that a group or a person has to Internet and the information technologies (Flew 2008). When the accessibility is limited, inequalities arise in a global or local scale. It is important to remember that these inequalities are not to blame directly on the access to the Internet or IT, but to social and economic issues already surrounding each person or community.
As I first heard this term at class, I immediately remembered my bachelor experience back in my country and my first days at USYD.
I studied in a public university in México City six years ago. We had a student email account by default that we never used, a scarce lab computer where two of my friends use to be all day long until they were able to afford a computer or internet at home, and a basic library where we had to look for sources in a filing cabinet.
Before entering to USYD, I have never used platforms such as MyUni or WebCT before. I told my highschool friends (who by the way, studied in private universities) about this, and they reply to me “We did had those platforms, we used to communicate with some teachers through Moodle or Blackboard”. That was the first moment that I felt genuinely digital divide. Not only in a global, but in a local scale.
A lot of things have changed and others have remained the same since I studied my bachelor degree. On one hand, all my friends have computers and almost all of them have internet access at their home, and gradually Mexico has enlarge the percentage of people and public schools accessing to the internet through the expansion of optic fibre, payment facilities for buying computers and equipping public schools with computers. On the other hand, this growth is small compared to the total population of México[i], and it mostly occurs in the developed cities, while leaving behind a vast majority of people and public schools still limited throughout the country or maybe with access but with a vague idea on how to use it as an effective resource.
While broadening Internet access is a notorious achievement, one cannot forget that the digital divide effects are a caption of bigger social, politic and economic problems. Poor people or public schools with access to Internet remain the same if there is not social and educative engagement from the government beyond just building infrastructure or selling cheap computers.
[i] According to COFETEL, in 2008 just 22% of the population had access to internet. Out of this percentage, 8.6% access it at home, 4.4% do not have access at home but have a computer and 9% have neither access to internet nor computer at home. I A census of the population is being made this year and it would be until they make the data public that we can have more exact numbers.
REFERENCES
FLEW, TERRY (2008) New Media, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 25-26
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