Final Exam Review (relating themes from "Toward a New Agenda" to class)

Throughout this class we have learned many things about the digital divide and this information gap present in the society. The term access has come up many times in the readings and in class and is definitely one of the more important terms pertaining to the digital divide. The reading “Toward a new Agenda” can be related to the larger themes from class in many ways, but one of the most prominent themes from class (the theme of access) makes its way in this article. The author of this article brings up the idea that the digital divide is not necessarily only an aspect of limited access, but more so an aspect of mental access. He is saying that a lot of people have access to technology and computers but they do not know how to properly use them. This article does a great job of summarizing key concepts and ideas that the society can use to help teach people proper ways to get the technological education to be successful in our society. I am not going to summarize the article for you because that is someone else’s job, but I will say that this article not only blames the digital divide on material access, but gives most of the blame to mental access. We have also brainstormed many ways in class that would possibly narrow the digital divide and those ideas directly relate to this article. The author comes up with many ideas and programs that he believes would help close the divide and these ideas directly relate to our class studies. You should check out the summary to see the different ideas and plans that this author makes to help close the information divide.