Monday, June 05, 2006

The Digital Divide

Jan van Dijk in his book "The Deepening Divide" discusses his thoughts on the digital divide. In his first two chapters he spends a lot fo time discussing the premise of this argument but his third chapter gets down to business and discusses why there might be a percieved digital divide and how motivational access plays a part in that. Van Dijk thinks that there is a reason that some people are not online and it has nothing to do with access to a computer or the internet. He also notes that of those people who don't have access to the net, they know people who are online and can help them out. Motivated access is only one part of the Van Dijk theory on the digital divide.

According to Save the Internet.com there is a much bigger problem. It is true that there are people who do not have access to the internet, but according to this site the bigger problem is that "big companies" are trying to take over the internet (and having some success). "Save the Internet" is, I believe, another way of looking at van Dijk's ideas. Van Dijk says that with there are users out there who try the internet but get frustrated and leave. Imagine if the Big 5 media companies decide to get rid of Net Neutrality (more info on net neutrality found at the Save the Internet website) and give a bigger pipe other compaines that pay for it. While it is a stretch I think that van Dijk might be a proponent of net neutrality and that the only way to narrow and shallow the digital divide is to keep everything as simple as possible (which it is already not but we can pretend).

While this is only my first look at van Dijk and his thoery and the Save the Internet website I can see some parallels between the two, a little more research should show how these two sites compare.