Pros And Cons Of The Digital Divide

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Digital Divide

Before, the digital divide had to do with people who had access to technology and people who didn’t but over the last ten years, almost the entire population have been using technology in many ways from laptops to cellphones. Nowadays, Digital divide is a term that refers to the gap between population and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology, and those that don 't or have access to them. These technologies include cellphones, televisions, personal computers, and the Internet. So this means that it is the study of the different inequalities between individual people, households, businesses, or geographic areas, usually at different socioeconomic levels or other demographic categories. In …show more content…

Some people think that the access to the Internet is a basic component of civil life that some developed countries aim to guarantee for their citizens as a basic human right. Telephone is often considered as important for security reasons. Health, criminal, and other different types of emergencies might indeed be handled better if the person in trouble has an access to the telephone. In addition, important fact seems to be that much vital information for people 's career, civic life, safety, etc. are increasingly provided somehow via the Internet. Moreover, computers and computer networks play an increasingly important role for these people in their learning and career, this is good as education should include computing and use of the Internet. In order to provide equal opportunities for everyone, governments might be able to offer some form of support. The use of the Internet should lead to a healthier democracy in one form or another. An ideal solution for this would be an increased in public participation in elections and decision making processes. The development of information infrastructures and active use of it would be a good shortcut to economic growth for less developed nations or countries. Information technologies in general tend to be associated with productivity improvements. The use of the latest technologies may give lots of industries of certain countries a vast competitive advantage. Nowadays, the accessibility of rural areas to the Internet is a test of the …show more content…

One way to bridge the digital divide is to permit unlicensed use of white space. White space means TV and radio frequencies that aren’t currently used for existing channels. companies have ways to operate on these channels without causing any kind of interruption to the neighboring programs. Furthermore, a global transition is being held to digital television and radio from analog has freed up an even broader swath of spectrum. Digital signals can transmit on different adjacent channels without causing any kind of disruption to either. New devices for example smartphones, tablets, and computers that know how to detect the unused spectrum can use it to transmit wireless broadband signals, this is also known as “WhiteFi” or “Super Wi-Fi.” These frequencies are especially very useful because they can carry a lot of data over long distances and reach even indoors. Tech companies for example Google, Microsoft, Intel, Dell, and HP faced off against lots of broadcasters to support early efforts to even reuse white space for this purpose, and even launched some of the first tests for new devices that can do it. Now, enthusiasm for WhiteFi is being picked up across the world. Moreover, a national demonstration project in the United States has led to public libraries being since spread to Finland, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Separately, even Kenya has also experimented with it in two different rural communities while the companies Microsoft and Google recently led trials in South