I don’t know what else to title this post. What I am referring to is not the traditional digital divide that is about access to digital technologies, i.e. some have the tools and some do not. What I am referring to instead is a digital divide related to creative use of the tools, about why some people are creatively using their access to Internet technologies and why others are not.
What started me thinking about this is a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life project, reported by Andy Carvin on June 1st. Carvin quotes the report as stating that 42% of American adults now have broadband access. OK, that’s still not the majority, but it does represent 84 million people, which is a lot. Whites (42%) continue to have broadband access more than African Americans (31%), but English-speaking Latinos are right up there too (41%). Education and income still provide big barriers, with 2/3rds of those families earning more than $75,000 or having a college degree having broadband, but only 1/5th of those families earning less than $30,000 or without a HS diploma having it.
However, Carvin argues that this is missing the point:
It’s not about access. It never was. It’s about what people do with that access.
Andy Carvin’s Waste of Bandwidth: June 2006 Archives
On the one hand, I disagree. Access has to be there. From a distance education point of view, one of our greatest hindrances is still access. We can’t teach those folks that we can’t reach through the Internet. And if learning is about meaningful interactions, which I believe it is, then we need faster Internet connections so we can employ technologies that allow for more meaningful interactions.
So access is still a problem and needs to be addressed.
But on the other hand, Carvin has a point. Eventually we want to get beyond access and push people to do something on the Internet — to create rather than simply consume. The Pew report has some details on this as well. In the study, they asked people if they had created their own web page or blog, or uploaded something they had created themselves, such as a story or video. Here, the numbers are different:
Not surprisingly, young people were much more likely to say yes. While 43% of respondents ages 18-29 said they had done one of these online publishing activities, only 29% of 50- to 64-year olds said yes, while just 18% of those 65 and older said yes. Meanwhile, race appeared to be a small factor, but in a rather counter-intuitive way: while 32 percent of whites said they had done one of these online publishing activities, 39% of African Americans and 42% of English-speaking Latinos had done so as well. So while whites may continue to use broadband in higher numbers, a higher percentage of African American and Latino broadband users are taking advantage of their access as content publishers. Similarly, income and education gaps are relatively minimal in terms of content production: 32% of users without a high school diploma versus 38% of those with a college degree, and 32% of users earning less than $30,000 a year versus 41% of those making $75,000 or more.
Andy Carvin’s Waste of Bandwidth: June 2006 Archives
It is interesting that there is still a huge age divide, but a much smaller difference due to race, education, or income. This seems to indicate that WHEN people have access, the digital divide is less of an issue because all types of folks will use the Internet for creative activities. The Internet does, as Carvin suggests, become a democratizing bridge.
Politically, this makes me want to push for lawmakers to work out plans to give free high-speed access to everyone, so we can more quickly cross these digital divides. Educationally, it makes me think a little more about something David Wiley said once … that it might be more important to study how to help more people learn, than to help those few who have access to learning to learn better.
Personally it makes me wonder how to cross that darned age divide when it comes to web creativity, and specifically how to get my parents and grandparents to create a blog and Flickr account!
technorati tags:blogtracks, AECT2006, creativity, digital, divide, pew, carvin, broadband
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