Digital Divide

Although there are 6 billion people in the world, only a third or 33% have access to the internet. (Sources from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm ) So why is there such a huge digital gap, where a country like Singapore of 5 million people has over 77% internet penetration and 4 billion people without? This is just an illustration of the digital divide, where other factors such as digital communication and mobile technology are limited or unavailable to people around the world. I feel that information technology is an important factor that helps a country to grow in terms of sharing of ideas and knowledge. However this is not an easy task for the people, if the government is unable to provide the infrastructure.

As we take information technology for granted, and organizations have to operate with it in order stay in competition with their rivals, information technology has become a common tool in our lives. As mention above, some countries that do not have the mean to provide information technology to their people will lose out, as they are unable to give them the basic tool for societal improvement. Libraries and school in such countries are either overcrowded or too expensive, leaving a large population without access to education. Education is the distribution of knowledge to the people and without knowledge; the people will be “stagnant” in their way of life and ideas, unable to improve. Information technology is a medium that aids is the distribution of knowledge as it can be cheap if the infrastructures are available. So in a way, I do agree with Prof. that “ICT is the catalyst that facilitates the knowledge revolution”.

I do believe that ICT will bridge the gap between the rich and poor, however as the say goes, “a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step”. Someone has to bring in ICT to them, because they don’t know what they don’t know. They do not know ICT exist, or have the means to bring it to the people. It is when organizations like One Laptop per Child (OLPC) aim to bring ICT to the people of third-world countries at a low cost. This will allow them to have access to vast knowledge around the world, where archives of science, mathematics, history, geography, bioscience and more information lie there waiting to be used. With the knowledge, the people can build windmill and generate electricity like a video I watched, or even power the village. It is these small steps that eventually move the country towards a change.

I find that as people chase the speed of processors, be it core 2 duo, quad core or i7, they are willing to pay more and more for faster technology. This makes me wonder why manufacturers can’t create another arm, and maintain the speed of these processors and bring down the price to make it cheaper and cheaper. Like this technology is more affordable to more people around the world, and crowd sourcing, a very interesting idea, would be more effective. Having the minds of 6 billion people around the world with access to the internet, the web will then be truly ubiquitous and harness the power of different culture, ideas and thinking.  

One article that wasn’t brought up in class is Reading 2. It intrigues me not because of the P2P (peer-to-peer) data sharing, or the merging of car wipers and GPS data to provide weather reports to news station. It is actually how machines are not beginning to “talk” to each other, with another machine. Previously, machines merely just obtain information like RFID tags, or make basic transaction. However, the article now suggests that future technology will allow machines to share information, and eventually learn from other machines. This brings automation and artificial intelligence to another level. Even though I m not like Will Smith in iRobot where he is in constant fear that robots will take over the world, I do think that if machines ever attain such intelligence and to “think” for themselves, the human population could be in danger in terms of jobs and lifestyle.