The New Digital Divide

When I goggled the digital divide there was an article called The New Digital Divide that caught my attention. This article talks about how telecommunications should bring people together when in all actuality it is bringing people apart. Basically the article was stating that "If you were white, middle class and urban, the Internet was opening untold doors of information and opportunity. If you were poor, rural or a member of a minority group, you were fast being left behind" (The New Digital Divide).

Personally this article has me a little puzzled. There are plenty of places for people to go if they do not have their own computer. People can go to their local public library, internet cafes, or they can use their schools study hall. Public libraries are taking up the slack and buckling under the strain. Nearly half of librarians say that their connections are insufficient to meet patrons' needs. Yes using a library facility can be a little nerve racking, but even with using their hardwired computers you still end up with some type of technical difficulty. I also know that children are not being deprived of using computers, because now schools are having children who are in kindergarten using computers. My daughter is now a first grader but in kindergarten I had to sign a waiver to let her use computers at school. In all actuality I do not know anyone who does not have a computer. Now the article states that High speed internet is for those who can afford it, while racial minorities and poorer and rural Americans must make do with a bike path, which in laymen terms means they will have to try and steal someone's wireless internet. Who knew that wireless internet is considered second class. I actually prefer using wireless internet than sitting at a hard wired computer. In fact I thought that most of America was using some type of wireless device such as I pads, cellphones, and of course laptops.

This article seems completely bias to me. I'm uncertain how they can say that customers who have high speed wired internet will greatly enhance their careers, education and quality of life and they will be able to do videoconferencing, and online classes. These statements are very baffling to me. Whether a person has hardwired internet or wireless those needs that I had previously stated before are still able to be met. According to numbers released last month by the Department of Commerce, a mere 4 out of every 10 households with annual household incomes below $25,000 in 2010 reported having wired Internet access at home, compared with the vast majority — 93 percent — of households with incomes exceeding $100,000. Only slightly more than half of all African-American and Hispanic households (55 percent and 57 percent, respectively) have wired Internet access at home, compared with 72 percent of whites.(The New Digital Divide).

The real reason for the digital divide apparently is not having many choices in internet providers and having affordable prices so that every household will be able to sustain in this technology driven world. (The Federal Communications Commission recently announced a plan to convert subsidies that once supported basic rural telephone services into subsidies for basic Internet access.) Though there are several large cable companies nationwide, each dominates its own fragmented kingdom of local markets. Cable's only real competition comes from Verizon's FiOS fiber-optic service, which can provide speeds up to 150 megabits per