The digital divide: bridging the gap

The digital divide seems to be growing in the modern world,with many countries falling behind on technology, but there has been many ideas introduced in order to try and bridge the gap between these countries and countries like the uk, some of these ideas include:

 1)   Focus on Digital Literacy: training on how to use the Internet is critical to closing the digital gap. The digital literary courses held at local public libraries were the most effective elements in encouraging broadband adoption. In fact, after graduating from the courses, a majority of the participants chose to purchase Internet access immediately on the open market, instead of waiting for the free network. Through the training, many came to realize how integral the Internet had become to everyday tasks like paying bills, and applying for jobs.

2)   Provide computers: While digital literacy was key, free or low-cost computers removed another significant barrier in Detroit. In this case, the computers offered a good incentive for taking a digital literacy course, and maintaining skills. In many areas people aren't able to afford computers, so in order for the gap to be bridged, computers must be supplied.

3)   Remove other financial barriers:  As Warner writes, Internet providers often require security deposits and a credit check before handing out equipment like routers and modems – making it harder for low-income homes to get service. Non-profit organizations should focus on finding a way to pay for those upfront costs.

4) Lower network charges: Many Internet service providers charge up to or over $40 a month for their internet, this might not seem like a lot to us, but in some low income areas this is a struggle to afford, decreasing the price of the service would allow for low income families to afford the service.


There are many organizations that specialise in bridging the gap of the digital divide, some of these include:

1) Learn Direct: Learn Direct aims to teach adults how to use IT using an online course.


2) Close the Gap: Close the Gap is an international not-for-profit organisation that is helping to bridge this digital divide by offering high-quality cost-efficient used IT equipment to projects in developing countries.

3) Getting Started: Get Started was a six-week campaign up to the end of June 2003, it was aimed to teach IT skills to the elderly, disabled and the disadvantaged, and to show them the benefits they could gain from using IT. 

4)Computers4africa: Computers4africa.org is an organization that aims to lift the continent of Africa out of the poverty trap by equipping the next generation to work in a global environment.

Computers4africa has supplied free computers to third world countries in Africa, helping to bridge the digital divide.

Different types of organisations.

The different types of organisations include:
Commercial Organisations, what we would normally refer to as businesses, they trade and provide services in a competitive market with the aim of making a profit and growing the business.
Public Organisations, these are primarily funded through taxation and are controlled directly or indirectly by the government. With the aim to to provide services to the public.
Non-profit Organisations, they raise their finance from donors or grant funding and use the funds raised to finance a particular cause or issue, they also provide employment and incomes for the administrators of the organisation.
Here is a list of organisations that fall into these catigories.

Open University

The Open University was established in Milton Keynes In 1969The company was created in order to help those wishing to pursue higher education on a part-time and/or distance learning basis, including people with health disabilities, who are officially a priority group for the university, nearly 13,000 OU students have health disabilities. The British Government has also tasked the Open University to continue the work of the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) when it was dissolved. The CNAA formerly awarded degrees at the polytechnics which have since become universities.Starting in 1969 students enrolled for January 1971 based in Walton hall, Milton keynes.there are currently around 253,000 student, 14,000 being postgraduates and 195,00 being undergraduates.How is it distinguishable from other universities; The Open University opened up education to everyone regardless of their circumstance or where they live. having students of all ages and backgrounds, other universities such as Cambridge and Oxford wouldn't allow this to happen, making the Open University a lot more accessible to the public, which would account for it's huge popularity.

Civil rights and personal information.

With the increasing use of IT in businesses and government, databases have been used as an easy means to storing your name and information about you, it's almost certain that you're on a database of some sort, most likely more than one, probably many. These databases could include:

1. Criminal databases - You normally get put onto a criminal database for committing even petty crimes, for example stealing will get you on this database. They hold information such as fingerprints, DNA and your location, these are kept on the database throughout your whole life as if you were to commit another crime, it would make the investigation a lot easier.
2. National Insurance - Once you are given a national insurance number, you will automatically be put onto a database, this will have information about your current work, as well as work history.
3. Driver's Licence - Your Driver's Licence holds key details of your whole life. Your age, name, house number and a picture of you as it's a legitimate form of identification.
4. Passport - This doesn't hold as much information about you as much as others, it states your age and has a picture of you to prove identification.
5.Social Networking sites - When you sign up to a social networking site, such as Facebook, all the information you enter is stored on their database, so the information they hold is decided by what you tell them. There has been a lot of controversy over this is many sites hold information about you even if you delete your account.
6. Hospital - The hospital will have a database which would include your birth date, and also your medical history, this way they know how to act if there's an emergency.

The reason we are now on so many databases is due to the fact that we now rely massively on computers to organise information for them, this has led to people feeling that their civil rights have been violated as so much of their information can be easily found on the internet.

SMS - Has its time past?

Origins of SMS.
SMS became so popular because it allowed people to message each other over the phone, this made it possible for long range conversations and for business reminders. On December 3 1992, engineer Neil Papworth sent the first SMS message to Richard Jarvis of Vodafone. It simply read "Merry Christmas," and Jarvis had no way of replying, this was the first ever SMS message sent, since then SMS has changed the way people talk to each other and use mobile phones in general. By January 2001, texts sent in a month hit a billion in the UK. The Telegraph reported that "Text messages sent on mobile phones have spawned their own truncated language, using allusion and codes to squeeze whole sentences into a maximum of 160 characters." This had a surprising effect on the way people would now type and write out sentences, people would often find themselves shortening sentences like they would for a text. In 2004, then Prime Minister Tony Blair took part in a live text chat, but struggled with the technology. "My texting talents are poor, let's say underdeveloped," he told Capital FM. At the Leveson Inquiry, Rebekah Brooks, the former News International chief executive, told how she had to inform the Prime Minister that LOL means 'Laugh Out Loud' not 'Lots Of Love'. In the 8 years since, texting has become a part of many peoples lives, it's a new means to stay in touch with people and have long distance conversations, and texts have also saved lives, caused heartbreak and speeded up daily life for millions. Nine in ten 16-24 year olds now say they communicate with friends and family on a daily basis via text messages, compared to 15 per cent of over-65s, according to Ofcom.

Although it's extreme popularity in the past, SMS has become less convenient for people, especially those with smart phones as they are able to get such applications as whatsapp and kik that allow for messages to be sent via the internet and therefore don't cost you money, and video call over 3g and 4g networks have also become popular, although texting is still used by many, but it's popularity seems to be falling as new messaging services are appearing. According to Forbes, the use of SMS during the holiday season has declined. People of course like to wish each other ‘Happy new year!’ or ‘Merry Christmas’ but instead of sending a SMS like they used to, they are turning to social media like Facebook/RenRen or Twitter/Weibo. This has become especially apparent in Finland, Netherlands, Philippines, Hong Kong and China.

Entertainment and Leisure

Technology had drastically changed the way people spend their time, in the past 50 years, technology has completely reshaped the entertainment industry and changed it in many ways, firstly we'll start with cinema and television, television is probably the most popular past time for most families, it has been recorded that in north america 99% of people own at least one tv in their house, this just shows how massively popular television really is, around 50 years ago, televisions were only for the rich and didn't offer much in channels, now people are able to pick up some TVs from as cheap as £50, and they have hundreds of channels to choose from, cinema has also become a popular means of entertainment for going out, popular films are shown before their release in order to make more of a profit than just releasing the dvd, although cinema has been popular since 1930s onwards, technological advancements in recording technology and cinema have made it a generally better experience for people. Better quality video and the introduction of 3D have became very popular, and more recently, the introduction of films shot in 48fps for a more smooth looking video. CGI is used in many modern movies, films are able to create amazing looking environments using such technology that cannot be made using standard sets used in older films, movies such as Avatar focused on creating landscapes that engrossed the person watching and made the surreal environments look almost real.

The landscape used in the film Avatar, made using CGI effects.

 Another major industry and popular past time is video gaming, since the first consoles came out in 1970 video gaming has evolved rapidly, with new hardware advances, game designers are able to make realistic looking games that are fun and also nice to look at, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are the more recent consoles to have come out, and have proved to be extremely popular, the Xbox selling around 70 million units. video gaming has become a common household hobby for many people, it's even played professionally in E-Sports competitions, just shows how popular it has really become. And now that smart phones and tablets have hit the market, people are able to play games from them wherever they are, gaming is no longer a home activity, and with the advancing mobile phone technology, they have become popular methods to play games on because of the power of advanced phones, they are now able to match the graphical performance of some older consoles.

Technology in crime prevention

There has been a massive amount of improvement in crime prevention used by the police in the last few years, due to new technology, preventing crime has became a lot more easier. The use of CCTV is essential to any large business or building, many homes now have CCTV cameras as it gives them the reassurance that they will be able to act if their house is ever broken into. Before the new CCTV, the analogue system was most popular, although very flawed, and a lot of CCTV systems were never switched on or even function correctly. It was a common problem that police wouldn't be able to have any recording of a crime due to simply people forgetting to turn them on. The use of CCTV is now essential in towns and city across the UK, in most town or cities you will find many CCTV cameras, it generally makes the job of policing a lot easier and secures the safety of citizens as it makes criminals a lot less likely to attack on people when they're being watched. This system is useful for picking up when there is an problem such as drunken behaviour  and fights which means that there is a even greater amount of protection for the general public and means that police can be informed quickly when events like these happen.

Over the years filing technology has become more sophisticated, before all files were physical and could become very hard to find the right one when it was needed. The new systems works through a massive databases where peoples names are held when they have been arrested, this ensures that names are never lost and can be easily retrieved, so that if they were to commit another crime it would be as easy to type their name into a database to see their record, this means that the police can act accordingly to the crime that they have committed, often if they are a repeated offender their punishment will be more severe, but if they aren't on the database and it's their first time, they are often let off with a warning depending on the crime committed.

There are some problems with new technology, one problem is that the comfort of the citizens isn't often maintained now that CCTV technology has become popular, there's no need to have as many police patrolling the streets at night, and therefore people feel less safe as they would like direct action to be taken when a crime is committed. 

New kinds of criminals have appeared more and more with new technology, firstly with the popularity of some sites such as thepiratebay.org and kat.ph, pirating films, music and video games has become very easy, a simple click of a button and you are able to download pretty much anything, this has caused a huge amount of piracy and has become a real problem for song writers and film studios. And computer hacking has also arisen with the advances in technology, the most extreme cases are the hackings of government databases, and leaked information being uploaded to websites such as wikileaks.com. many celebrities have had personal information leaked as hackers have been able to access their emails.

 This article is an example of a crime that was committed due to advancements in technology, the thieves were able to find and track down incredibly rich people who they would then rob. It would have not been possible for them to have done this around 15 years ago because the internet was still in it's early stages. 
Other forms of crime due to technology would include Cyber crime, crime that takes place primarily on the internet, the most common of which would be the stealing of personal information, this is done by using mail or spam to distribute viruses,worms, spyware and Trojan horse software. Spam directed at computer programs/files, instant messaging systems,weblogs and mobile phones makes these tools vulnerable to worms, viruses, and fraud. Some viruses facilitate the illicit access of the personal or sensitive data stored on the devices. For mobile phones, new text messaging technology enables senders to conceal their identity, allowing impersonated messages that can facilitate spam, fraud and viruses. Malware enables criminals to use the mobile phone without the user’s knowledge or gain access to the phone’s personal data. The exploitation of these technologies is expected to increase in the next year. Spam also poses a threat to wireless game consoles, personal data assistants (PDA) andVoice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). That is why it is essential to use an antivirus on any computer that is connected to the internet, as virus attacks have become very common.

These are some of the types of malware that can be installed onto a computer