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September 02, 2006
The Digital Divide Opportunity
I've often noticed how discussions about the Digital Divide are grounded in one key assumption; that those on the wrong side of the divide - namely low-income, disadvantaged persons - need a handout; a giveaway. Most debates about how to best address the issue seem to eventually progress into tactical issues about free or subsidized broadband, giving away PCs, training programs, content geared toward teaching people how to balance their checkbook and so on.
While removing any barriers for people to gain access to, adopt and apply technology should be considered a good thing, there are two things missing in the debate; the fact that helping people understand the value technology can bring to their life and motivating them to prioritize it are pre-requisites for any of the other tactics to be effective, and the fact that a "technology welfare program" is not necessarily the best way to go about it.
My own view of this issue has evolved a great deal over the past couple of years. It finally took shape about a year ago, at a time and place that I least expected. I was attending a conference on community broadband in Johannesburg, South Africa, a place I had never visited before, and an absolutely beautiful country.
As I sat in the audience at the conference, one of the many speakers - a public official from one of the participating cities - walked up to a podium (I won't name him so as not to embarrass him) and proceeded to give a presentation about what technology meant to his city/community. His presentation skills were unorthodox; speaking in a somewhat low voice, very dry sort of humor, injecting pauses in odd places. Nonetheless, he had the audiences' (and my) full attention.
He clicked his way through a number of slides and stopped on one with a simple photo; that of two young children standing next to each other, obviously very (and I mean very) poor, outside a shack of a home - really nothing more than a few pieces of tin and wood held together, which are unfortunately all too common in that country. Driving anywhere around the outskirts of any city and beyond, you find open fields that could only be described as looking like refugee camps. It's often said that a farmer can go to bed one night and wake the next morning with an entire village outside his home, and the contrast between this and an otherwise wealthy nation, with vibrant, civilized cities, is stark. The best way I can describe it, while over-dramatizing a bit, is "a country with no middle class." You're either upper middle class/rich or you're destitute poor. So, this makes the country quite a petri-dish for the Digital Divide issue.
He then proceeded to ask the audience a few questions; what do you see? A couple of people - trying to anticipate his direction - said they saw sadness, hopelessness, desperation. Nope. He then asked the audience to look around the photo and describe what they saw. One man, thinking he had caught on, noticed a rough-looking power line strung through the field and said he saw “opportunity,” obviously trying to tie things back into broadband over power line, one of the technologies being discussed at the event. Nope.
Then, having built us up with this bit of drama, he said the most unexpected thing; "what you see is ambition; you see potential." Another perfectly-timed pause and he proceeded to explain. He pointed out something about the shack behind the children; that it had a couple of plants neatly dug into the ground, and it had what might be described as a mural painted on one side. This, he said, was a clear indication that the family living in that shack - viewed from the outside by all of us as sadness, desperation, hopelessness and all these other things, was viewed in a very different way by the family living in it. It took pride to paint that mural, and plant those small shrubs. And it took ambition to even attempt to improve on the situation these people found themselves in. How might this ambition translate if the same family had access to the technologies we all take for granted?
Wow. You could have heard a pin drop. In my case, the seed for a new way to think about the Digital Divide was planted. I started to think about the statistics that are often thrown around; like only 1 billion people in the world access the Internet, which leaves 4 billion who don’t. I started thinking about how vast I saw the Internet today, and how much more vast it would be if these other people were on-board. I started thinking about all the millions of Weblogs, photos, music and other types of user-generated content being produced – and what abundance and variety of content would exist if the other 4 billion people had the same tools.
So, in addition to cementing the idea that low-income and disadvantaged persons had much more ambition and potential than most give them credit for, it also brought home the fact that having them adopt technology would not only benefit them, but would be a boom to the Internet, to the economy and to society as a whole.
The barrier created by cultural conditions where families/individuals may prioritize their discretionary income on things other than computers and Internet access (things like music players, entertainment, trendy clothing, etc.) is substantial. It may be true that the first interaction many "digitally-divided" family members/children have with technology will not be what we expect (computers, laptops, the Internet and a spreadsheet). It may be game consoles, music players, etc. This should be considered an opportunity as well. How can phenomenon like iPods/iTunes be used as the initial platform to help young disadvantaged people understand the life benefits that can result from using technology? Thinking along these lines, what are the chances that an iPod or smartphone becomes the critical entry-level technology device, and the personal computer almost becomes a “peripheral” to that device (a place to store my music and photos?) New opportunities arise when we start thinking this way.
OK, so this isn’t exactly a recipe for how to solve the issue of lowering the many barriers that exist (sorry if you were expecting that), but I think framing any challenge in the right way is the first step to solving it. I guess the key message is that the Digital Divide is not so much a problem to be solved as it is an opportunity that can’t be missed.
Posted by Greg at September 2, 2006 03:42 PM