Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Insuring "We Media" Includes All of Us

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So I’m finally wading through some of the gajillion posts on Bloglines I haven’t been able to read, and via Ewan McIntosh I found this really interesting presentation from Andy Carvin of the Digital Divide Network. It’s a pretty sobering perspective on the access challenges we face. Some highlights:

  • Two-thirds of America’s poor do not have access.
  • More than 80 percent of non high school grads are offline.
  • Because the middle class has gotten connected, Internet access is generally assumed in this country, meaning the digital divide is more problematic than ever.
  • With more an more government services going online, the result is only the priveleged can take part.
  • Most bloggers and blog readers are white and well off which squeezes many out of the public discourse.
  • There are more Internet users in NYC than in all of Africa.

    He also points to this project he’s involved with in Atlantic City that is bringing video blogging to inner city kids. The plan is to have them create video shorts about their lives in a low income, high crime commmunity.

    The faster these technologies move forward, the wider the divide is going to grow.

    • Comments

    1. Tom Hoffman says

      The divide in technology access isn’t a vast and problematic as some of the other divides between the two Americas, like say, healthcare.

    2. rosemary says

      What about access to technologies? I am concerned about the increase use of podcasting. This technology is completely inaccessible to deaf and hard of hearing people.