Digital Divide 2.0
For a long time now, we’ve thought of the digital divide as the divide between the people who have access to technology and also has the ability to use it and the people who don;t have the access to technology- let alone the skills. But now there seems to be a new digital divide; it’s not about having or not having, it’s about choosing to- or not.
The New Digital Divide
The Digerati The Left Behind
»Uses Firefox »Uses Internet Explorer
»Knows who Doc »Already has a doctor, thanks very much
Searls is
»Uses RSS Reader »RSS?
»Has a blog »Reads blogs (sometimes)
»Reads BoingBoing »Watches the Tonight Show
(or Slashdot)
»Bored with Flickr »Flickr?
»Gets news from Google »Gets news from Peter Jennings
Which side are you on??
After reading Seth’s Blog, I was more and more intrigues by this Digital Divide 2.0. We’ve all seen it, our parents probably have a hard time setting up a facebook account (or any account in that) or have trouble understanding RSS or html. But the newer generation do this everyday; we need to put an image in a site, but it doesn’t have the basic image uploader- so what do you do??
Firstly, you set up a photobucket account (easy, mostly 5 minutes), then you upload a picture into your brand-new nifty account (super easy!), and then you hover on that image, and Voila, you have yourself an html of that image! Another way to do that is to get the URL of that image and paste it into a basic html coding; a href=, etc.
Secondly, you go to that site of yours (a blog, perhaps?), you add a post (too easy) and you paste that html on that post. Then you’re done.
Now, how many people would NOT understand what the heck I was saying back there?? This is what I mean; there is a smaller yet also larger digital divide between people who have access to technology and also have the skills to utilize it. But, i mean seriously, why should we care about how some internet-nerds go on about in the web? Well there is something very important about being technologically-able, and not just knowing basic skills- that’s so last season.
When companies want opinions about a product they’re selling, or is looking to hire people who could probably work online, they search the web for bloggers (yes, that’s how they know what the public is thinking) and they look through what these net-nerds are talking about, and they most likely would hire them because they have such skills and that they’re so open about it. Yep, yep the net-nerds are what journalists, politicians and companies look to at first- cause they’re so accessible!
So what should you do now? You get your mind straight and at least try out all these awesome tools online which could help you greatly on your work, or even just making the net easier to use and control /organize. Better Hurry though- as Seth says- the new net-worthy community won’t wait for you :)
Reference
Godin, Seth. “The New Digital Divide.” Seth’s Blog. 15 Mar 2009 .>
