5/10/2005

20 - New Digital Divide?


last photo before the rain
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

Seth Godin muses about the New Digital Divide as compared to the old digital divide. The new "haves" would be the Digerati (who blog, use firefox, use RSS readers and so on) and the new "havenots" would be The Left Behind (using Internet Explorer, having no idea of flickr and so on).

His remarks sound interesting. However, I believe all of this a bit exaggerated, because this is a divide of choice,as Seth himself points out, made by the "haves" and as such not even a subdivide of the old digital divide where there is no possibility of choice.

All these divide findings are based on the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis established by Tichenor, Donohue and Olien in 1965,and they are affirmed day by day, with new characteristics, of course. And as the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis states, the gap widens constantly. There are measures to close or bridge this gap - which is only a symptom of deeper divides such as lack in income and literacy - but they are way too few.
More: .....Digital Divide Network, Economist, E-Inclusion

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi francessa,

an article that supports findings of knowledge gap is here:
BBC-Article

ray boulder

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