INFO 657 Student Project

Recently, rapid developments in the digital divide have attracted the attention of both the academic and political worlds due to the reduction of information gaps. The Handbook of Research on Overcoming Digital Divides: Constructing an Equitable and Competitive Information Society presents a comprehensive, integrative, and global view of what has been called the digital divide. Collecting an international collaboration of experts, this Handbook of Research offers policy makers, academicians, managers, and researchers a complete reference source to the interactions, evolutions, and policies developing within the field.

Globalization and global equity are built on the premise of peace. The causes of many divisions and tensions in human communities lie in the imagined or real gain of financial or material assets of some elements of the community to be at the expense of others. The global community however lacks clear definitions and methods of stability, whether political, economic, or social. Digital Bridges: Developing Countriesin the Knowledge Economy provides insight into the methods and theories behind the globalization of information technologies.

Investigations of what increasing digital connectivity and the digitalization of the economy mean for people and places at the world's economic margins. Within the last decade, more than one billion people became new Internet users. Once, digital connectivity was confined to economically prosperous parts of the world; now Internet users make up a majority of the world's population. In this book, contributors from a range of disciplines and locations investigate the impact of increased digital connectivity on people and places at the world's economic margins. Does the advent of a digitalized economy mean that those in economic peripheries can transcend spatial, organizational, social, and political constraints--or do digital tools and techniques tend to reinforce existing inequalities? The contributors present a diverse set of case studies, reporting on digitalization in countries ranging from Chile to Kenya to the Philippines, and develop a broad range of theoretical positions. They consider, among other things, data-driven disintermediation, women's economic empowerment and gendered power relations, digital humanitarianism and philanthropic capitalism, the spread of innovation hubs, and two cases of the reversal of core and periphery in digital innovation. Contributors Niels Beerepoot, Ryan Burns, Jenna Burrell, Julie Yujie Chen, Peter Dannenberg, Uwe Deichmann, Jonathan Donner, Christopher Foster, Mark Graham, Nicolas Friederici, Hernan Galperin, Catrihel Greppi, Anita Gurumurthy, Isis Hjorth, Lilly Irani, Molly Jackman, Calestous Juma, Dorothea Kleine, Madlen Krone, Vili Lehdonvirta, Chris Locke, Silvia Masiero, Hannah McCarrick,Deepak K. Mishra, Bitange Ndemo, Jorien Oprins, Elisa Oreglia, Stefan Ouma, Robert Pepper, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Julian Stenmanns, Tim Unwin, Julia Verne, Timothy Waema

Amid all of the talk about the digital divide, there is little to point to in the way of effective solutions. Putting computers in classrooms without adequate teacher training, Internet access, and courseware doesn't solve anything. School administrators, communications and information technology experts, and policymakers need a broader understanding of the issues surrounding the debate in order to formulate policy and implement viable solutions. This book approaches the problem from a historical, political, and global perspective. It presents a comprehensive discussion of the problems and provides workable solutions, potential model approaches and country-by-country analysis. Unique in scope and structure, this work is both a policy guide and reference book, providing solutions and resources that will help to build a community of interest and foster the exchange of information and best practices. Anyone serious about bridging the digital divide will want to read this book and mine the accompanying CD-ROM for its extensive set of references to web sites and other materials and resources.

This book presents data supporting the existence of a gap-along racial, economic, ethnic, and education lines-between those who have access to the latest information technologies and those who do not. The Digital Divide refers to the perceived gap between those who have access to the latest information technologies and those who do not. If we are indeed in an Information Age, then not having access to this information is an economic and social handicap. Some people consider the Digital Divide to be a national crisis, while others consider it an over-hyped nonissue. This book presents data supporting the existence of such a divide in the 1990s along racial, economic, ethnic, and education lines. But it also presents evidence that by 2000 the gaps are rapidly closing without substantive public policy initiatives and spending. Together, the contributions serve as a sourcebook on this controversial issue.

Successful strategies and principles for using information technology to transform regional and community economies exist, and they are presented here with clarity and insight in a way that is useful to both practitioners and researchers. Although the communities discussed here range far and wide, from those in Russia to Australia and to Kenya, any community can benefit from enhanced utilization of information and communication technologies. The ways in which technology can help improve economic, social, cultural, and political conditions are as numerous and various as the communities themselves. In Central Queensland, Australia, community leaders have brought in a high-tech expert advisory system to help them control weed infestation. New Zealand and Australia have pioneered telehealth, the exchange of health care information and the delivery of some services across great distances. In Russia, wiring a community was found to be about more than mere hardware and software; vital to the process was understanding how communities provide access to information technology, how authorities and volunteers can improve computer literacy among citizens, and how connectivity can be extended to greater numbers of people. In some areas of south Asia, nongovernmental organizations have teamed up with local governments to increase access, empowerment, and e-commerce opportunities. These are but a few of the ways this volume contributes to our knowledge base about the impact of technology on economic development.

Much of the discussion about new technologies and social equality has focused on the oversimplified notion of a "digital divide." Technology and Social Inclusion moves beyond the limited view of haves and have-nots to analyze the different forms of access to information and communication technologies. Drawing on theory from political science, economics, sociology, psychology, communications, education, and linguistics, the book examines the ways in which differing access to technology contributes to social and economic stratification or inclusion. The book takes a global perspective, presenting case studies from developed and developing countries, including Brazil, China, Egypt, India, and the United States. A central premise is that, in today's society, the ability to access, adapt, and create knowledge using information and communication technologies is critical to social inclusion. This focus on social inclusion shifts the discussion of the "digital divide" from gaps to be overcome by providing equipment to social development challenges to be addressed through the effective integration of technology into communities, institutions, and societies. What is most important is not so much the physical availability of computers and the Internet but rather people's ability to make use of those technologies to engage in meaningful social practices.

In this issue of Library Technology Reports, Andromeda Yelton shows how libraries can build on the breadth of this population to help bridge the digital divide and provide even greater access to information. Yelton breaks down the demographics of mobile internet users, provides examples of how different libraries are reaching out to these...