(This post was from awhile back when Linda Goin, myself, and a few friends hosted a social media seminar in the Appomattox area)
I recently have been following the conversations on Twitter from a few Social Media River members @copelandcasati (Copeland Casati) and @Appomattox_News (Linda Goin) in relation to the ‘Digital Divide’. Here’s the idea: social media tools and high speed internet access (or even any internet access sometimes) provide a quantum leap of opportunity for those who can afford (in time and money) to tap into these vast resources. For those who cannot get high speed internet access, they are left watching on the shore while the river of revolution rushes by.
Now grant it, some rural communities are content to step aside while technology advances into a strange new world of hyper-connectedness and (potentially) boundless info-glut. I respect those who feel overwhelmed or uninterested in all the Web has to offer…after all, not every aspect of the Web is a benefit or advancement. And while this is true, I also see what those rural and often economically challenged communities are missing.
The Web has opened doors of societal change that were only cracked open by Gutenberg‘s printing press long ago. We have entered an era of extreme cultural changes similar to Gutenberg’s time. No longer is the information or cultural currency guarded by the elite. Social media/Web 2.0 has unleashed the original intent of the internet: to be an environment of widespread collaboration, collectively shared information and facilitating platform for open (if only virtual) community life.
But, as illiteracy slammed the doors to a new world of information (via the printed word) in the Europe of the latter 1400s, so now we have our own barriers to harnessing the digital revolution. And this is no greater seen than in areas of poverty and in our rural communities.
Who is being left in the dust? Who wants to come and cannot? Is this really a revolution or a widening digital divide? It’s time to ask more questions. It’s time to flatten the playing field even further. High speed internet access and the social media toolbox may be a key for our rural communities to step into a renaissance of their own.
Which side of the divide are we on?
More thoughts to come…’The Digital Divide: Poverty and The DustEaters’
More resources:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/03/04/rural-broadbands-struggles/
http://www.copelandcasati.com/labels/digital%20divide.html
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/lloyd_testimony.html
http://www.freepress.net/node/48588
http://www.internetforeveryone.org/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4306633.html
