Digital Divide In The Second Machine Age

Social inclusion is about involving everyone in society, making sure all have opportunities to work or take part in social activities.

Since the launch of the Internet as a global communication network and the boom in communication technologies, our world has been overwhelmed by a new phenomenon – digital divide. It has gradually turned into a major, constantly growing world issue, threatening to further increase the gap between advanced and developing countries. Yet, is digital divide really an unprecedented occurrence or a natural and unavoidable trend? “Divide” is certainly a word whose meaning could be traced back to the mere dawn of human history. It goes even deeper – to human nature itself: to sex and racial differentiation, to unequal physical and mental powers, to different

There is also a large percentage of households making an annual income of over fifty thousand. In comparison to the nation’s income levels per household, Dakota County has a smaller percentage of households that make under fifty thousand and an incredibly low number of households that make under fifteen thousand. Due to the abundance of economic capital in the County, there may not be as big of a digital access issue in the county. However, there is still roughly 7% of the county which lives under the poverty line which means that readily available access to technology and the internet in homes may be limited to a small portion of the population which in turn creates an access issue for some residents in the county. The lack of material resources and technology access is a major player in the digital divide

Taylor discusses in chapter 4; Unequal Uptake, her take on the inequalities and realities of web 2.0, and that while the web is a great tool to be used and it does provide connectedness, we have yet to achieve true cultural democracy. With this, she takes into account of what the media boosters think about the accessibility of the internet and how it empowers those who take the time to use it. They would argue that now with the internet we are all hyper-connected and this makes us hyper-empowered, and should we thrive in using this new system become hyper-democratic. However, it is a problem to say the internet has inequalities because it is very ambiguous in terms of the web and the amount of inequalities and factors playing are quite expansive. One of the clearer issues that Taylor points out is the monetary division among internet users, where the rich can afford what is described as the super highway of web, high speed, and the secondary class of internet, wireless, is left to the financially challenged. In the participation of the rich and large monopoly companies like Amazon, Google, and so forth is what creates the difficulty for niche cultures and late bloomers to flourish using the web. But this lack of openness is not the only problem as when the web evolves it is becoming harder to maintain diversity because it is turning into a much more personalized entity, meaning the exposure to difference may be decreasing as our ‘filter bubbles’ become more apparent. She illustrates that the big difference in the real world as opposed to the virtual is that we are focused on the wrong things, things that please us, that may make us famous, etc. but we should be finding new ways to confront opportunity in order for the digital democracy to come to

According to Hernaes (2017), technology in the United States has been growing. With the growth of technology, more “blue-collar” jobs are being replaced. Inequality is increasing because the jobs being replaced are lower wage jobs. The reason for inequality is that those in the lower class, and even the middle class are losing their jobs. Those in the upper class mostly retain their jobs because their labor requires more skilled labor. The income gap increases because the wealthy can allocate their spendings on other resources, or cheaper resources that will replace labor. The loss of these jobs would cause the poor to become poorer, and the rich become richer. The supply of labor demanded would decrease, resulting in fewer workers. The growth of technology began as a “slow train since the 1980s.” Technology has been growing “exponential[ly]” ever since (Jones, 1998).

In this article, Jim Tankersley interviews Larry Summers, a Democratic economist and former Treasury Secretary, about the implications that technological advances, such as the use of robots in factories, have on income inequality and on middle-class jobs and wages. Because these new machines and robots can do the same work of low-skilled workers for lower costs, there has been a vast decrease in the amounts of jobs available for the middle-class. While some believe that the solution to this would be to obtain more education and learn skills that cannot be replaced by machines, Summers believes that this will not solve the problem because the income inequality caused by technology is due to the increase of wealth distribution to the top one

Income inequality is the unspoken truth of American life. Millions of Americans live in poverty while the minority holds the majority of the wealth. This problem has become more severe in recent years, with the wealth gap increasing exponentially. While innovation drives economics in the free market, recent innovations have caused the wealth gap to become skewed. Broadband Internet is one particular innovation that has spurred economic growth but has hurt the lower class. Broadband Internet can be defined as “768 Kbps download and 200 Kbps upload” (Dunbar). Although there are many varying classification of broadband Internet, this definition will be utilized for the purposes of this paper. The non-adoption of broadband Internet by those living

In previous research, it was argued that privilege causes a digital divide on the Internet, and, as a consequence, could cause widening inequalities outside of the digital world, as well. The conclusion was that Asian-Americans, white men, and the privileged understood and utilized the internet more, while Latinos, African-Americans and those of a lower-socioeconomic status understood the internet very little and, in turn, do not gain as much benefit from it (Hargittai 2010). However, this is hardly a provocative conclusion because the research methods employed seemed to be chosen in order to coordinate these results without any regard for the interests or motives of the students in question. Therefore, the goal of this study

Technology is vastly changing and advancing all across America and in other countries. However, ever since technology has made up and coming advancements, it as also been a factor in the income inequality gap. Ultimately, the advancement is affecting both high and middle income countries. The advancements are replacing manual labor jobs that pay well. For example, in large factories there are now robots that can assemble the company's products. The machines and robots can perform the job faster and quicker; however, they are taking overs people's jobs and forcing them to find lower paying jobs. In the article “Is Technological Innovation Making Society More Unequal?” The author expresses if robots are to blame for income inequality. It claims that “the robot named Baxter costs $4.32 per hour versus humans that were earning $23.32 per hour” (Naudé,

To demand a new way of teaching and learning involving technology. (Thomas, 2011, p. 4) These popular claims within the seminal literature on digital natives (for example, that digital natives possess a sophisticated set of ICT [Information and Communication Technologies] knowledge and skills or that they have different learning styles or preferences) are largely unsupported by research evidence (Bennett, Maton, & Kirvan, 2008, p. 777). However, using these claims, enthusiasts’ present digital natives as a part of a utopian vision of technology tied to an exoticized picture of liberated young people (Buckingham, 2011). Despite slight distinctions, the terms digital native, the Net generation, and Millennials are used interchangeably (Jones et al., 2010, p. 723). Digital immigrants are characterized as individuals born before 1980 who knew an analogueonly world and still rely on analogue forms of interaction. For digital immigrants, the communication changes happening via the introduction of digital technologies are supposedly learned and relearned, instead of easily becoming second nature (Palfrey and Gasser, 2008, p. 4). Problems are often identified not with the digital natives but rather with older generations of non-natives who display their “digital immigrant accent” (Prensky, 2001a, p. 3) when using new technologies. In this way, digital immigrants are portrayed as being tied to older media, unable to catch up (Buckingham, 2011), therefore embodying the antithesis

2001.In his article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” Prensky defined ‘digital natives’ as young people who grew up surrounded by and using computers, cell phones and other tools of the digital age. Prensky claims that a digital environment dramatically changes the way that young people think and process information, it possibly even changes their brain structures. Prensky contrast ‘digital natives’ to ‘digital immigrants’. Digital immigrants are people who were born before widespread use of digital technology and who adopted it to some extent later in life. Prensky states that all people born after 1980 are ‘digital

Since its introduction on a public scale in the 1990s, the internet has been associated with many changes in social experience. Many aspects of social life such as education, work, commerce and even personal relationships have changed through the internet. However, researchers have found that, at least in the early years, access to the internet is shaped according to gender, class, ethnicity and education. During the 1990s the typical information technology user was a white, male, professional with a background in IT. This bias in internet access was named the ‘digital divide’ to point out the implied social inequalities. It was said that the internet was

Two things are known for sure— middle class America is shrinking and technology is advancing. Total income in the United States has shifted drastically from middle class households to upper class households. “...49% of U.S. aggregate income went to upper-income households in 2014, up from 29% in 1970. The share accruing to middle income households was 43% in 2014,

The income has flowed unequally to those at the top of the income spectrum. Part of this problem has been because of the complexity inherent in larger labor market inequalities. Falling labor force participation, stagnating median wages, and a declining share of labor income are all part of the current U.S. labor market trends. The technology and education argument has been noticeably distinguished.

I have also learned that there is something called a "Digital Divide" that pertains to the different relative access to online information and applications available to different populations,