"For some time now, cyberspace has been characterized as an electronic frontier, democratic and open to all, but such characterizations ignore the fact that only a minority of the population of the United States, let alone the world, is actually online."
He continues to argue that with digital access that the United States has they gain a, "monopoly of knowledge, and with it they gain unfair political, economic, and social advantages."He defines the digital divide as the gap between the expanding growth of digital users with computers and those who still lag behind in the paper world.
Another interesting viewpoint of Mr. Dance's is that, "when the remaining 96% of the world's population gets online we will have the true opportunity for building citizens of the world and a world citizenry."
How long do you think it will be before everyone is online? I should think that third world countries have a long way to go before they can afford to have personal computers for each citizen.
I have also included the Pro's and Con's of Digital and Analog as Wikipedia defines it:
- Analog-Analog systems are very tolerant to noise, make good use of bandwidth, and are easy to manipulate mathematically. However, analog signals require hardware receivers and transmitters that are designed to perfectly fit the particular transmission. If you are working on a new system, and you decide to change your analog signal, you need to completely change your transmitters and receivers.
- Digital-Digital signals are intolerant to noise, and digital signals can be completely corrupted in the presence of excess noise. In digital signals, noise could cause a 1 to be interpreted as a 0 and vice versa, which makes the received data different than the original data. Imagine if the army transmitted a position coordinate to a missile digitally, and a single bit was received in error? This single bit error could cause a missile to miss its target by miles. Luckily, there are systems in place to prevent this sort of scenario, such as checksums and CRCs, which tell the receiver when a bit has been corrupted and ask the transmitter to resend the data. The primary benefit of digital signals is that they can be handled by simple, standardized receivers and transmitters, and the signal can be then dealt with in software (which is comparatively cheap to change).
NJ Fordham, I think you raise some very interesting points! As you stated above, I also think that it will be quite some time before 3rd world countries will be as technologically advanced as we are. However, I think that there are many other factors that go into determining how accessible becoming "online" will be. For example, there are many countries that have governments that restrict their citizen's usage of technologies. Imagine if we had to be granted a permit to use some of the digital technologies that we use today? Our iPods, computers, cell phones; life! These third world countries you speak of might be "behind the time" when it comes to technology, but which you would think to be worse; not having the technology or having the technology and not being allowed to use it?
ReplyDeleteHaving the technology and not being allowed to use it is worse. Not to sound shallow, but how frustrating is it when your PC isn't working or when your ipod freezes. I doubt every culture will come around to technology, some cultures are embedded in simple living.
ReplyDeleteJumping a gun a bit with bringing up the digital divide. Is it really about being digital, per se, or is that just a catchy alliterative phrase? The comparison is useful, though.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of interesting points here. In regards to Mr. Dance's idea that when 96% of the world gets online we can have global community is true but doubtful. I think already we have created a global community. Sure it is focused on the business aspect of the world but we also have social capabilities across those developed nations. I don't think we need all 96% of the world to be online to have achieved global communities. It may be ideal to have the remaining 96% but I don't believe it to be necessary.
ReplyDeleteBuilding on Lauren's comment, the Tiananmen square massacre is blocked by Google at the request of the Chinese government. Who is really at fault here, the government or the company? Either way, the limitation of the use of the Internet is a tragedy, and China is only one example.
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