Digital Divide

In this week’s blog I will be looking into the topic of the digital divide. I will explore what the digital divide is and then I will try and answer the question, should the digital divide be closed or maintained?

The term 'digital divide' describes the fact that the world can be divided into people who do and people who don't have access to modern information technology, such as the telephone, television, or the Internet. The digital divide exists between those in cities and those in rural areas as well as between the educated and the uneducated, between economic classes, and globally, between the more and less industrially developed nations.

The advantages of closing the digital divide are that there becomes an increase in business trade across the world if everybody across the world has access to information technology. There is also an increase in job opportunities. These factors enable there to be less poverty across the world as everyone will have the latest information technology.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/22/gordon-brown-superfast-broadband

Gordon Brown has said that he wants people to have superfast broadband in their homes to help bridge the digital divide. He says: “the world available to those with superfast broadband will be unimaginably richer than to those without."
He believes that "Faster broadband speeds will bring new, cheaper, more personalized and more effective public services to people; it will bring games and entertainment options with new levels of sophistication; it will make accessing goods and services immeasurably easier,"



However there are some disadvantages with closing the digital divide. For example the cost of computers and other forms of technology is high and less developed countries may not be able to afford such technology. There is also an issue in places such as Africa where people are sacrificing food and clothes to keep their mobile phones running.

It is my opinion that something does need to be done about the digital divide. In England alone there are people who do not have access to information technology. The government’s new scheme goes a long way to reduce the divide. However on a more global scale it is difficult to solve the problem. The main reason for this is cost; the less economically developed countries are always going to struggle to afford the cost of new technology. Therefore I feel that larger, wealthier countries need to do more. This could be by donating technology or build places where people can access the internet easily. The closing of the digital divide will be advantageous to everyone across the world because surely a world that is better for the global economy and reduces poverty will be a good thing.

Twitter the new Blogger?

In this week’s blog Iwill be developing my ideas on the topic of the impact social media is having on blogs.

In the first ever post i explored what the impact social media is having on blogs. http://digitext09.blogspot.com/2009/11/digital-cultures-lecture1.html
The aim in this blog is to see how many people are using social networking sites like Facebook and twitter. I will then discuss what I believe the future of these sites to be.

Statistics according to Mashable show that Facebook "counts more than 250 million active users, 120 million of which they claim login at least once daily." While Twitter statistics count users aged 18 and older who visit or use Twitter at least once per month:

• 2008: 6.0 Million Users (11.1% of adult Internet users.)
• 2009: 18 Million Users (3.8% of adult Internet users.)
• 2010: (Projected) 26 Million Users (15.5 % of adult internet users.)

60% of Twitter users abandon their accounts within their first month of use.
However Twitter's retention rate is only 40% compared to MySpace and Facebook who enjoy a 70% user retention rate.

These statistics are interesting and they show how popular social networking sites are. It also shows that Facebook is more popular than Twitter this may be because it hasn’t been established for so long. However another reason for this could be because Facebook can be more interactive between people due to Facebook chat. It also enables users to have a status with as many characters as possible, because twitter restricts the user to 140.

In the original blog post I felt that social networking sites were having an effect on blogs because more and more people were using them. Although people might not be blogging as much as they once were they are still used by journalists to discuss their opinions on matters such as politics and sport. People will visit the Twitter profiles of friends, family, or their favourite celebrities, and access that information in different ways, whether it’s through clients or portals that attempt to aggregate it. With that in mind, it actually might be best to start thinking of Twitter as the new Blogger.

Long Tail

The topic of this week’s blog will be Long Tail. I will be looking into what Long Tail is and then answering the question, Is Long Tail a good or bad?

Long Tail was popularised by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article, in which he mentioned Amazon.com and Netflix as examples of businesses applying this strategy. Anderson says that: “The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers.”





One person who opposes Long Tail is Andrew Keen. Keen has written a book called The Cult of the amateur and in this book he is looking into: “How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy.”
Keen complains that blogs are “collectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture”.
He goes onto say that Wikipedia perpetuates a cycle of misinformation and ignorance, and labels YouTube inane and absurd, “showing poor fools dancing, singing, eating, washing, shopping, driving, cleaning, sleeping, or just staring at their computers.”

So is Long Tail Good or Bad?
In my opinion Long Tail is a positive thing because it is encouraging niche markets to use the internet. The major companies and mainstream markets are always going to be at the head of the demand curve, however people should be able promote their own products or companies on the internet because even if only one person is interested, there is still an interest in the product. There are aspects in which I agree with some of Andrew Keen’s views because some internet sites are created for personal benefit (see my post about blog spamming.) However I believe that it is beneficial to the internet and to the people who use the internet if niche markets are encouraged.

What I have found interesting and not so interesting in Digital Cultures

In this week’s blog I will be look back on some of the previous topics discussed in this digital cultures blog. I will discuss the areas that I found interesting and others that weren’t so exciting.

The first blog studied what impact social media is having on blogs.

http://digitext09.blogspot.com/2009/11/digital-cultures-lecture1.html

I found this topic interesting because social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter are growing increasingly more and more popular. I learnt that these websites are encouraging journalists and broadcasters such as the BBC to use social networking as a way of breaking news. It also showed me how the development of technology has enabled us to change the way we live our lives. For example if you wanted to keep in contact with someone 20 years ago you might write a letter but these days we can use Facebook to search for old friends and see what they are up to. It will be exciting to see what the future of these social networking sites will be.

Another topic that I found interesting was whether Ray Kurstweil’s theories will ever become reality.

http://digitext09.blogspot.com/2009/12/will-ray-kurstweils-theories-ever.html

This was a topic that I found interesting because it focused on the relationship between humans and robots. If Kurstweil’s theories were ever to become reality then the world would be a completely different place to how it is now. The development of new technology makes his prediction that humans and machines will merge together in the physical and mental realms possible. Therefore this blog enabled me to learn about the ways in which robot technology is developing and becoming increasingly more likely that Ray Kurtweil’s theories can become reality.
However one area that i didn’t find particularly interesting was second life and simulators.

http://digitext09.blogspot.com/2009/12/do-second-life-and-simulators-serve.html

The reasons i didn’t find this that interesting was due to the fact that I don’t really believe that second life serves a purpose. I can see why simulators exist because they can help teach airplane pilots how to fly because its better to train in a safe environment where mistakes can be made. However second life doesn’t offer that much to society and it will never really develop. Some companies may like being able to hold meetings in second life so everyone can attend and this from a business point of view does make sense. I do feel that the reason many people use second life is purely to create a version of themselves that they like and live a life that they want to.

Overall the topic of Digital Cultures has been interesting as I’ve looked at the ways technology has developed and adapted over the years. In my opinion the future of technology is exciting and it will be interesting to see how the topics that I have discussed in my blog develop.