Demographic and Artistic Views of Digital Divide: Act One Scene One no comments
Digital divide is generally defined as gap in access to digital technology marked by age, disability, race, gender, culture, religion, location , and socioecomic status.
The advent of the Internet and the invention of the world wide web has transformed our societies. The potential of this transformation is not in doubt, however, what will happen to the gap between “information haves” and “Information have nots”? Will the gap be eroded or aggravated?
The series of post will focus on causes and consequences of the inequalities and inequities (if any) that exist in the digital world.
Historically, there are two poles to the issue of digital divide – optimist and pessimist views. The optimists see the transformation into the digital world as an opportunity for social change where digital technology will significantly increase the quality of life and remedy the inequalities of the non-digital world whereas the pessimists posit that the inequalities and other ills of the pre-digital world would be reproduced in the digital world as such digital technology is not an opportunity for social change.
The definition of digital divide suggests that digital divide is dimensional in space, time, and context. As a result, recourse to the fields of demography and design science is a requirement for understanding these dimensions.
Demography as the study of size and composition of population, internal changes to the composition , and the relationship between the sociophysical changes and the environment. The demographic arm will provide qualitative and quantitative handles to explore the space and time dimensions of digital divide.
If digital technology is artificial then it could be treated as a work of art. With design science, a clearer insight into designing can be gained. Design science is a system of logically related knowledge, which should contain and organize the complete knowledge about and for designing. This knowledge will facilitate the understanding of digital technology in context. Is digital technology a misfit? Watch out!!
Likewise, design science as a system of logically related knowledge, which should contain and organize the complete knowledge about and for designing is crucial to the understanding of digital technology in context. Is digital technology a misfit? Watch out!!
Bibliography
Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander
Demography: The Study of Human Population 2nd ed. by David Yaukey and Douglas L. Anderton
Digital Divide by Pippa Norris