what divide?
I’ve been writing on defining digital divides for ourselves in our own communities as opposed to thinking about them in terms of the series of solutions that have come to many communities in a top-down manner, even if partly the result of demands from the bottom or near-bottom (or those at least cognizant of a divide) for something.
I generally recite the typical aspects of the divide: equipment, training, and connectivity and deconstruct/explode them further along lines anyone can understand: technology changes more and more rapidly. So: is a given piece of equipment up to it’s task, is it equitable? is a given training regimen adequate? are there other tools and strategies we should be trying? is the connectivity on par with what others have, and at similar price point?
That’s all well for an effort to break free from other’s definitions of the divide, especially from those who would have us believe it has been bridged.
Back to the beginning: what I take to be one of the hallmarks of the divide is isolation.
I began by writing that the digital divide is not over…. I feel a compulsion to reiterate that point… and to bluntly state that perhaps those who would have us believe it is over have simply not heard, or not heard from those who are most isolated… those who are effectively voiceless because their stories don’t get told in a meaningful way and they are often without the tools to tell their own stories in the media of the connected.
In my own city there are plenty of people who do not realize the isolation of individuals and communities so proximate to them geographically.
We must advance community use of media tools, and community and individual participation with media tools to tell their own stories… to be the media (as the saying goes).
April 29th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
[...] thought about the isolation of communities and the question of communities making their own media. But Jamie’s framing requires we [...]