Digital Divide: It's Not About Connections
| 08:31 UK time, Tuesday, 12 September 2006
There's no doubting the impact of Internet access on global awareness - just look at some of the blog entries on the Lords Resistance Army and its ceasefire.
This woman in Tennessee shares her about the plight of the abducted children. Jenna in Nebraska of the children in horror.
Col Dan Smith (USA retired) attends a seminar and uses what he learned to explain why in Africa might apply to Iraq.
That and thousands more reflective, imaginative blog posts surely mean a better informed electorate in the world's most powerful nation.
The concern must be that the knowledge traffic is one-way.
This isn't about the inability of people in poor parts of the world to access the Internet. That's a problem, but one which the widening web of mobile phone networks seems to be taking care of.
What I'm thinking of is the gap in language and culture between those with a democratic vote, as in the US or Europe, and those who don't know real democracy and who get ranting propaganda from the Internet.
The urgent technological need is for instant, reasonably accurate page translation on the web.
Then the global debate can begin.
For now, the division between digital haves and have-nots is one of consciousness, not connectivity.
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