The Economic Divide
Technology has come to our lives with out a turning point. It rules
every aspect of our society including the way that our countries are
directed. With its introduction in the United
Sates, the U.S. Department of Commerce adopted the goal of providing
universal telecommunication and Internet
access. In 1997, the president Bill Clinton declared a goal of wiring
every home by the year 2007 (Reiser, Wallin & Wilson, 2006).
Nevertheless, while some societies are growing exponentially some has
been left out. These differences, in very few cases are small and
untraceable, but in other cases the differences are huge and seemed
at fist sight. Differences that come from the economic area and that
affects directly, positive or negatively, the lifestyles of the
citizens. The reality is that the people that live in those places
like Africa or Haiti are the ones that are directly affected with the
development of technology.
Technology encloses the telecommunication media, home artifacts,
among others. Without any doubt the greatest invention of all times
has been the invention of the computer and the internet. The internet
permits us to search information about anything, all that you can
imagine. Nowadays we are able to look up for our family members and
friends; we can even make friends and know people from other places
with different cultures and languages. It is amazing how this tool
has become a virtual socializing agent; we do not need to be in the
same place any more as other people in order to know someone new. It
is sad and lamentable that the same aspects that can be good for
someone can be prejudicial for someone else. Some of us are in total
contact with the latest news, but in contrast there are people that
are enclosed in their own world because they are restricted by their
resources.
Dasgupta, Lall & Weeler (2000) explains that although futurists
regularly extol the Internet's potential benefits for poor countries,
skepticism is common among development researchers. The benefits of
the internet implantation in those countries can be favorable in
certain way to their progress, just as we do. People from these
nations can obtain a better education and an educated country has
better opportunities to develop. The difficult aspect resides in how
they are going to carry out this implantation. In these countries the
economic resources are limited and also the physical environment is
not the best. Some of these places are huge in territory and the
people live spread around the country. The curious thing is that some
of these places are rich in natural resources such as Africa that is
abundant in metals and precious stones. That is because the earnings
are from the people that already have money and the technology. As we
can imagine these persons are not the majority and the rest of the
population are the ones left out of the world development,
economically and technologically.
With the advent of technology the economic divide has been increased.
Societies with the best and newest discoveries are ahead in the world
scenario. Science research has been promoted by the governments in
order to obtain leadership and power that ultimately will give them
the best technology to dominate and influence other countries. The
division can be product of many sources, but the final result will be
the same, a division between groups as a result of the economy. We
now live in a material society and we are focused in the money that
will give us a respectful, desired and high position in the group.
In addition to the economic divide, that consists of a person or
group of the population does not have the capital to acquire
technology such as a computer, Nielsen (2006) introduces two more
stages for a digital divide. These stages are the usability and
empowerment divide. The first one refers to the fact that one person
has the money to have a computer and internet but they do not know
how to use it. This is a big problem for people that does not have an
education in this technology or just because it is impossible for
them to understand because they did not have the fundamental literacy
skills, such as writing and reading. Nielson argues that the
industries prefer to direct the technology to youths and left out, in
a certain way, the elderly people. The elderly people can have more
capital than the young ones but them does not represent the future in
technology. The elderly are not a priority, in this society this
population has been discriminated because people think that they are
useless for their age. The second stage, the empowerment divide, is
when you can posses the capital to buy technology and you know how to
use it. The divide reside when the person have a widely knowledge but
do not use it at it maximum level.
The two stages explained by Nielsen (2006), the usability and
empowerment divide are a subdivision of the economic divide. If
someone is not a literate person maybe it can be a result of the
monetary situation of their home or social environment. For the other
part the elderly people are affected and forget in this development
because they are not considered important in the economic process.
This idea is directly proportional to the economy. In the
capitalistic society the citizens that are important are those that
can contribute to the country with their work and the ones that can
consume the most. For the empowerment divide the connection with
economy is harder to see. The fact that we become more and more
dependent of technology when we have it is the result of the economy
power behind technology. With more money there is more technology
that we can get, and vice versa. The ability to
access and use technology effectively will be the key to economic
success for both individuals and communities. Individuals must learn
to use this new technology to have any chance of being successful in
the emerging knowledge economy (Reiser, Wallin & Wilson, 2006).
Reiser, Wallin & Wilson (2006) carried out
a study in North Carolina and it showed that black, rural, and female
respondents were significantly less likely to have home computers
than white, urban, male respondents. Respondents with higher incomes
and more education were more likely to have home computers. These
results demonstrate the importance of education among the different
social ethnicities. Education is the key of successful in this era,
without education there are fewer opportunities to be in a good
economically position. Nowadays is basically necessary to be a
multidisciplinary student we should learn and study about diverse
subjects because those can be the better tool that we can have for
the future. With the fast development of technology our lifestyles
are exposed to a continually change and we should be able to work in
those multifaceted areas in order to be successful.
As we can see the economy dictates every aspect, directly or
indirectly, of our lives. In this case the economy affects the way in
which people communicates including the politicians of the powerful
countries. These persons are the ones that take control in the
decisions of the other people that depend on their resolutions. There
are people that do not think that economy is the agent that rules our
societies, but it is. The most important aspect is that it is the
main responsible of the digital divide. The crude reality is that if
someone does not have money, they will not have the possibility to
have technology and to progress in this material world. It is sad
that we can not have another option because every time technology is
changing and we have should goes in the same direction otherwise we
will be in disadvantage. Obviously there are people that do not have
other option and they are enclosed in a technology free society.
References:
-Reiser
C., Wallin J. & Wilson K.; 2006;Social
Stratification and the Digital Divide
-Dasgupta
S., Lall S. & Weeler D.; (2000); Policy Reform, Economic Growth,
and the Digital Divide: An Econometric Analysis; Development Research
Group World Bank
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