Sunday, February 8, 2009

Who Does the "Digital Divide" Effect?

I read an article about the "Digital Divide" and who uses technology, vs. who would use it more if it was avaliable to them. The article was interesting because it says that though research suggests lower classes would use technology more than upper classes if it was avaliable, upper classes use it more, and this is causing there to be a "electronic underclass", to which important technological services are unavaliable. However, they found that within those able to get online, the lower classes used the internet more. They had several possibilities as to why, including amount of leisure time, usefulness of the internet (for those who can't find the services elsewhere), and possibly the fact that lower- income people feel the cost of the internet is so high that they need to be on it more. This surprised me, because I have never had to pay for my internet, so trying to get alot of use out of it never occured to me.

http://www.physorg.com/news127403188.html

1 comment:

  1. I also found it interesting that the lower class community uses the internet more than the upper class. I figured that it would be less of a hassle for people who own computers to use them, and therefore they would use them more often, but this article brings up a lot of points that I hadn't thought about. I guess I had my original opinion because I don't usually go to the library or any other place with public internet hookups since I have my own internet at home. I think it would be very interesting and enlightening if these researchers conducted interviews of people of different classes using these public internet stalls. This would provide a more in depth look of what they use the internet for, compared to the yes/no and multiple choice questions of basic surveys.

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