The digital divide is no myth
Last month a dear friend of mine had to spend the whole night sitting on a public toilet.
Why?
Because she was using the loo in a community centre and the caretaker, not realising there was anybody left in the building, accidentally locked her in and went home for the night.
My friend had no option but to sit it out until the community centre opened for business the next day.
That would have been a horrible experience for anyone, but particularly for my friend as she is frail and recently bereaved.
Of course if she had had a mobile this would never have happened, but she is in her 70s and she did not have one.
I mention this because I am astonished to think that anyone could think the digitial divide is a myth.
Yesterday there was a Big Debate at Birmingham's ICC on the subject of Digitial Revolution: More Power or Powerless.
Pete Ashton did a live blog from the debate, reporting that the question of the digitial divide came up.
I was astonished that Charlotte Carey questioned the divide. "Don't most people walk about with mobile phones in their pockets?" she asked.
The figures are hard to come by so I don't know for sure, but day to day life tells me a significant number of people do not.
What I do know is that last year as many as 39 per cent of households did not have access to the internet. In the North almost half of households do not get online.
My own experience backs this up. When I had my 40th birthday party a few years ago, I had to make two types of invitations - digital ones to be sent by email and the old fashioned sort for the good half of my friends who did not have a computer.
Then there were the ones I chose to send by snail mail to the friends who do have computers and email addresses but are simply too busy to use them.
I see evidence of the digitial divide everywhere, even in our own news room where some are happily embracing the new media and others are so busy responding to the full-on demands of producing the print version of The Birmingham Post they have barely ventured into the blogosphere.
It is a massive issue. How do we forge ahead in the brave new world of cyberspace whilst not forgetting those for whom a keyboard is an oddity and a mouse is something that squeaks?
Such people do exist.
Do I care about them? Yes, very much indeed.
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Jo
I must have missed this one but as Technorati picked up your link to my blog and your quoting me I feel obliged to respond. The question I raised was in the context of the debate. Like you, my question was based on anecdotal evidence and intended to stimulate the debate a bit.
Perhaps with all of this we each bring with us different ideas and perceptions about who we mean when we talk about the digital divide.
For me I guess it is born out of research work I've been involved in, looking at social inclusion in the creative industries - the digital divide often being cited as an issue or major contributor to exclusion. So perhaps I am/was thinking of a younger demographic than you or at least those of working age.
My point I suppose was that as mobile technologies become more sophisticated, more accessible and the various media converge, then the digital divide might not be as vast as we perceive. I think I was responding to an assumption often made that folks need to be sat at an expensive PC to get internet access, when in fact most mobile phones and increasingly TV's can get internet or digital services. My understanding is that approx 45 million mobile phones are in use in the UK belonging to something like 85% of UK households (not my stats from various online sources).
I think there are issues for example: if a job application form is only made available online, as I believe some local authority cleaning jobs are, then this is an obvious issue as a regular mobile phone would not be too handy in this situation. I guess my point is that a lot of assumptions are made about the digital divide and perhaps we need to be a little clearer about who we mean. Although I have worked with a lot of folks who would identify themselves as non-techy or not computer literate I also see them doing all sorts of sophisticated things with their mobile phones and accessing all sorts of digital services.
Incidentally both my parents and even my 91 year old Grandmother are or have been mobile phone owners.
Charlotte
Hi Charlotte. Thanks for this. I can see that you were putting a one-liner into a very fast moving debate in an attempt to challenge an assumption. I understand now where you are coming from and find your perspective interesting. I appreciate your observation that mobile phones make digital technology more accessible and that many people are more digitially literate than they give themselves credit for. Perhaps the term “digital divide” is misleading. It suggests a straight line with some one side of it and some the other. The reality is far more complex than that. I’m sure we would agree that increasingly, whatever we do, we have to be aware that people engage with digital technology at a range of different levels and the important thing is that we do not unwittingly exclude those who should be included. And yes, when we are talking about “THE digital divide” let’s be clear about precisely which divide of the many we are talking about.