There Is No Digital Divide | Hacker News Reader

There Is No Digital Divide

technologyreview.com

35 pointsllambda10 comments

This seems like an attempt by a journalist to write off a complex problem because it does not reduce to something simple.

As a high school teacher, I see a clear difference between students who have internet access at home, and students who don't. I see a difference between students who have guidance at home in how to use the internet appropriately, and those who don't.

Students who have access and guidance at home spend their online time at school focused on learning. Technology is a tool for their learning. Students who don't have access or guidance at home spend their time in school learning about the technology, rather than using the technology to serve their learning needs. Students who don't have access at home also spend a lot of time trying to avoid learning and use facebook/ youtube etc.

The "digital divide" concept is messy, but it is real.

Right, there's a divide there.

But the salient point I've seen raised is that the problem isn't so much access. It's the guidance or other motivation to use the access that's the problem.

Access without the proper guidance/motivation is just another way to destroy the productivity of the people who can least afford to lose any.

It's like the lottery problem. The people who can least afford the disposable income that should allow for engaging in such a statistically unlikely reward are the ones who far and away spend the most on it. The lottery increases the prosperity gap in this country, and the very institution that should be decreasing that gap (the government) acts to increase it.

Is free access of net benefit or detriment? I think we should put assumptions aside and evaluate that question carefully. Once the government takes action, it rarely pulls back -- even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it's doing more harm than good. That's because the momentum of government action produces too much money and power for the people in charge.

Did you read the article? The journalist is in fact saying that the "digital divide" doesn't exist because that conceptualization of the issue is too simple and doesn't leave room for the nuances of how people who aren't seen by the dominant cultural narrative as being technologically sophisticated are, sometimes, very wired in their own ways.

The critique is trying to draw attention to the ways we provide enormous amounts of money for programs that try to get people to use technology in the "right" way, which is, as the interviewee states, basically measuring everyone by how much they use technology the way affluent white men do. Other people are finding ways to appropriate technology for their own needs and uses that are just as valid and valuable for their own situations but these aren't recognized in the way this money is meted out and the ways the success of these programs are measured. For instance, you could argue that teen engagement with online social networks now serves a crucial function in identity formation, which is valuable and possibly, more useful to some of the kids than some of the things you learn in class. If, for instance, you're a 16 year old kid coming out, I'd venture that having social support in that process will probably be more valuable 20 years down the line than memorizing the difference between sine, cosine and tangent.. but when it comes to what NTIA will use as a measure of success for their programs, it'll be the trig scores.

Edit: a good starting point for research into the (imo, really important) functions online social networks serve for teens is danah boyd's dissertation (as well as some of her other work). She's not my favorite but her stuff is probably the best known. http://www.danah.org/papers/

There may or may not be a digital divide, but the Times article provides a lot of evidence that there still remains a parenting divide. Those children with engaged caring parents have a better chance than those with clueless parents.

Now, what happens if you have caring engaged parents and NO computers/internet/smartphone/technology at home? Well, just ask anyone over 45.

Bingo. It was people without Internet access who built it from scratch.

As I add to abuckaplate.blogspot.com, I'm struck by the incongruous fact that our poor's greatest malady is obesity. Uncomfortable to say: the problem the poor face isn't, on the whole, access to XYZ (food, data, etc.) - it's doing something sensible with it.

Rather than a rebuttal, that article was almost entirely devoid of any actual content.

My sentiments exactly. More like a hazy academic working in the fashionable "gender studies" field wanting to promote her work.

Plus the way the journalist that put up the piece found her (not because she was suggested as the best in the field or anything, but because she tweeted about the article), well, ...

200 million should be spent on teaching critical thinking then they would be able to recognize 'cloaked' sites and other bullsh*t

>"So, for example, some of the work I do is with homeless LGBT youth, most of whom are Black or Latina/o. These young people are struggling with some big life challenges, and they are - like other people their age - completely wired. My research finds that Black/Latina/o LGBT youth who are homeless - in other words, the very people who should be on the "other side" of so-called the "digital divide," are in fact, quite adept at technology and most have smart phones.

Besides her argumentation being too hazy and hand-wavy for my taste, I don't think extrapolating from a tiny (but fashionable in academia) minority of the poor (LGBT homeless youth?), can give us any real insights about the digital divide. (It can give us a pretty good idea about the way the academic world works in human sciences, though).

Try going in MS, AL, SD, MI etc to study the vast masses of poor people instead of focusing on some insignificant in the grand scheme of things subgroup (urban + young + LGBT + Black/Hispanic, how more narrow can you get?), that not only can be a real outlier, but it also doesn't define what being poor is.

I work in this area and I have seen the best data available on connectedness (rigorous surveys where n=30,000). The old poor are disconnected. But the young poor are overwhelmingly connected. No one in "our" world would ever suspect it, but they are using facebook, sharing videos and photos, texting, using apps, etc etc at a MUCH greater rate than the typical lameass white guy that you think of when you think tech geek.

And in today's US where one out of every two babies born is a minority, a disproportionate number of whom are poor, looking at trends within these demographics is more important than ever.

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