Digital Divide and Social Media: Connectivity Doesn’t End the Digital Divide, Skills Do

‘No Technology’ by Sammy0716 on Flickr

“The notion of being social on the Web is constantly evolving since we are connected not only via computers but also via mobile phones or handheld devices. The web is getting more powerful and social: new messaging services emerge each month; streamed media is becoming real even for the non-technical consumer; Google reshapes its services like a child rearranging building blocks; new ideas in federated rather than centralized systems are being explored, and more. The frequent change in layouts, privacy settings and interaction tools indicate that online dynamics require new classes of knowledge and skills to adopt such major changes on Facebook, Google, Twitter and other places in order to navigate and socialize online.

What is important to emphasize is that these digital divides, that go far beyond the pure infrastructure issues, need to become a key focus of engagement for profit and nonprofit organizations as they continue their missions to develop programs for social and digital inclusion.” (Danica Radovanovic, Scientific American)

Everyone Speaks Text Message

Illustration by The Heads of State

“For the vast majority of the world, the cellphone, not the Internet, is the coolest available technology. And they are using those phones to text rather than to talk. Though most of the world’s languages have no written form, people are beginning to transliterate their mother tongues into the alphabet of a national language. Now they can text in the language they grew up speaking […] ‘We are getting languages where the first writing is not the translation of the Bible — as it has often happened — but text messages.’ (Tina Rosenberg, NYTimes.com)

A snapshot of the rapidly changing world of computing, communications and technology.

"In just four decades the Internet has spread to much of the world. Now, the shift to high-bandwidth connectivity and the global availability of supercomputing is accelerating."(Jonathan Corum, NYTimes.com)

HTML5: A Look Behind the Technology Changing the Web

“Many companies are placing bets. Amazon.com, Inc. used HTML5 for a Web-based app called Kindle Cloud Reader that sidesteps Apple rules for selling content on its iPhone and iPads. “Angry Birds” creator Rovio Entertainment Ltd. developed an HMTL5 version that lobs avian projectiles at enemy pigs with no need for an app. Pandora Media, Inc. used the technology to overhaul its popular Internet radio website, which launches more quickly and helps users more easily track others’ listening patterns.” (Don Clark, Wall Street Journal)

Internet responsible for 2 per cent of global energy usage

“Raghavan and Ma suggest that attempts to create more energy-efficient internet devices, while worth pursuing, will not do much to lower global energy consumption. Instead, they propose that we should think about how the internet can replace more energy-intensive activities. Their calculations show that a meeting that takes place by video-conference uses an average of one hundredth as much energy as one in which participants took a flight so that they could sit down together. Replacing just one in four of those meetings by a video call, they add, would save as much power as the entire internet consumes.” (Jim Giles, NewScientist)

Can an algorithm be wrong? Twitter Trends, the specter of censorship, and our faith in the algorithms around us

“Not only must we recognize that these algorithms are not neutral, and that they encode political choices, and that they frame information in a particular way. We must also understand what it means that we are coming to rely on these algorithms, that we want them to be neutral, we want them to be reliable, we want them to be the effective ways in which we come to know what is most important.” (Tarleton Gillespie, CultureDigitally.org)

Mobile phone giant challenges new US regulations on internet neutrality

Verizon vs. FCC…con’t.