Henry Jenkins: Ensuring Technological Access Will Solve the Digital Divide (A Misconception)
Filed at 4:03 pm on October 18, 2006 • 1 comments
The Digital Divide (which has historically been understood primarily in terms of technical access) masks a deeper cultural challenge which we are calling the Participation Gap as many young people lack access to core social skills and cultural competencies that might enable them to fully participate in the new media landscape.
We’ve wired the classroom—now what? We must also struggle to overcome the Participation Gap. What you can do with ten minutes of access to an out-dated machine in a public library with mandatory filtering software and with no opportunities for storage or transmission pales by comparison with what you can do from a computer in your home which enjoys unfettered access, high bandwidth and continuous connectivity. Schools rob the most technically-advanced youth of their best techniques for learning while those with limited outside access struggle to keep up with their peers.
Historically, youth who had access to books or classical recordings in their homes, developed, almost without conscious consideration, skills valued in school. New media experiences may be playing a similar role: shaping skills and knowledge that determine how these students are perceived by teachers and peers.
Bill Ivey and Steven J. Tepper have described the long term consequences of this participation gap: “Technology and economic change are conspiring to create a new cultural elite—and a new cultural underclass… Can America prosper if its citizens experience such different and unequal cultural lives?”
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Comments (1)
1: Andy Carvin from Founding Editor, Digital Divide Network at 1:14 pm on Monday, October 23, 2006
One of the biggest challenges to bridging the digital divide has been overcoming the rhetorical baggage regarding the meaning of the digital divide. All too often, the digital divide is discussed by mainstream media and politicians as that gap between those communities of users who have access to inforationand communications technologies, and those who do not. Unfortunately, this misses a much bigger picture. Communities need access to a wide range of skills - from improved functional literacy to technology skills to media literacy - to make their ICT experiences meaningful. They need access to rich, robust and relevant content - and perhaps more importantly, the ability to produce their own rich, robust and relevant content.
We shouldn’t see the digital divide as beign about who has access to what. As Henry so rightly articulates, it’s about participation. It’s about civic and socioeconomic involvement. It’s about becoming 21st centur citizens, where access to technology leads to opportunities for improving quality of life for our families and communities. If we’re just trying to give everyone access so they can become day traders and buy stuff from online retailers, what’s the point?
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