The Wrong Side of the Digital Divide

Merry Christmas a day late, friends. Some of you have noticed that I have been unusually quiet on my blogs, my facebook, my phone ... yes, I have been incommunicado.

I am up at my parents' place in central-northernish Ontario in a small town called South River. My parents have internet, but it is dialup. They have a phone, but they have to pay for each long distance call.

I don't know whether my expectations have changed, or whether their internet is not working right. Regardless of the reason, I can't do a thing with their internet except read other people's webpages. I can receive, but even doing a simple email is a big challenge. (Some applications do work .. I've been trying to see which of my various transmission tools still work .. for some reason I can get into Blogger but not into Facebook. I can get into my Gmail account but my Magma account is hit and miss).

It's frustrating not being able to be a transmitter, but it's also a good reminder that the digital divide exists. And not just in the third world, but here in our own country. Things that we take for granted in the wired city just don't always work as well .. or at all .. out in the woods.

I hadn't really thought too much about this before my trip to Kenya. One of the panels I cohosted at the conference I attended was "Bridging the Digital Divide". The focus of the panel was to discover what the issues around connectivity were between journalists in the first and the third worlds ... I didn't do a lot of prep before I got over there because I really had no idea how big the digital divide really was.

What I found out in Kenya was: a) high speed isn't necessarily high speed .. there is not much fibre optic cable to get the signal out so they rely on satellite. Which isn't always fast b) most people go to internet cafes run by the private sector to access internet, which means that people have to pay for internet access and c) most phones are cell phones which don't work so well for internet. So most people don't have internet access. And the other thing which stands in the way of equal access is the size of websites ... many websites are now too big to load properly. I am becoming much more aware of why small is better ... some websites may contain vital information, yet can't be read properly because they're too big for the pipe to handle.

Up here in South River, there are also connectivity issues. There is dialup, but high speed is just coming to town in the new year. It hasn't been here yet because it's in a less populated area. The town will be connected to cable internet, but out here on the lake, it will be satellite, connected via a tower a couple of roads over. But we still don't know if we can get it because we may be too far or at the wrong angle from the tower. So even in a wealthy country like Canada, connectivity is not guaranteed.

Why should we care about whether or not people have access to the internet? For a lot of reasons ... but mostly because the internet is not a niche interest anymore ... it has grown to the point where it is now an essential technology to connect with the rest of the world. And if we have two different standards, some people are going to be shut out.

Like I am right now. This holiday with only a bit of internet is very nice .. I am glad I can't spend all my time on the internet. And I am developing much more of an understanding of the challenges of communicating from semi-connected places on the planet. (Facebook doesn't work at all up here! But I am also looking forward to getting back to the city so I can communicate in the ways I'm used to.

Until then .. email me at vlfenner@gmail.com ..that one seems to work .. it was also my best bet in Africa.