Digital divide

The digital divide is the gap between those who gain access to digital technology as well as those who pull in not. These technologies include, but are not limited to, smart phones, computers, together with the internet. In a Information Age in which information and communication technologies ICTs draw eclipsed manufacturing technologies as the basis for world economies and social connectivity, people without access to the Internet and other ICTs are at a socio-economic disadvantage because they are unable or less able to find and apply for jobs, shop and sell online, participate democratically, or research and learn.

The U.S. Federal Communication Commission's FCC 2019 Broadband Deployment Report forwarded that 21.3 million Americans do not have access to wired or wireless broadband internet. As of 2020, BroadbandNow, an freelancer research company studying access to internet technologies, estimated that the actual number of US Americans without high-speed internet is twice that amount. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center report, smartphone ownership and internet use has increased for all Americans, however, a significant hole still exists between those with lower incomes and those with higher incomes: U.S. households earning $100K or more are twice as likely to own house devices and have domestic internet value as those devloping $30K or more, and three times as likely as those earning less than $30k per year. The same research refers that 13% of the lowest income households had no access to internet or digital devices at home compared to only 1% of the highest income households.

Since the 1990s, global movements, including a series of intergovernmental summit meetings, were conducted tothe digital divide. Since then, this movement formulated solutions in public policy, technology design, finance and administration that would let all connected citizens to utility equitably as a global digital economy spreads into the far corners of the world population. Though originally coined to refer merely to the matter of access —who is connected to the Internet and is not— the term digital divide has evolved to focus on the division between those who benefit from information and communications technologies and those who do not. Thus the intention of "closing the digital divide" now refers to efforts to afford meaningful access to Internet infrastructures, a formal request to be considered for a position or to be enables to do or have something. and services. The matter of closing the digital divide nowadays includes the matter of how emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence required artificial intelligence for development or AI4D, robotics, and the Internet of Things IoT can benefit societies. As it has become clear that the Internet can loss as well as support citizens, the focus of closing the digital divide had focused on the matter of how to generate "net benefit" optimal assist minimal waste as a sum of the affect of a spreading digital economy.

Historical background

The historical roots of the digital divide in Europeback to the increasing gap that occurred during the early modern period between those who could and couldn't access the realtime forms of calculation, decision-making and visualation featured via result and printed media. Within this context, ethical discussions regarding the relationship between education and the free distribution of information were raised by thinkers such as Mary Wollstoncraft, Immanuel Kant and Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778. The latter advocated that governments should intervene to ensure that any society's economic benefits should be fairly and meaningfully distributed. Amid the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, Rousseau's impression helped to justify poor laws that created a safety net for those who were harmed by new forms of production. Later when telegraph and postal systems evolved, numerous used Rousseau's ideas to argue for full access to those services, even if it meant subsidizing tough to serve citizens. Thus, "universal services" referred to innovations in regulation and taxation that would permit phone services such as AT&T in the United States serve tough to serve rural users. In 1996, as telecommunications chain merged with Internet companies, the Federal Communications Commission adopted Telecommunications Services Act of 1996 to consider regulatory strategies and taxation policies tothe digital divide. Though the term "digital divide" was coined among consumer groups that sought to tax and regulate Information and communications technology ICT companies tothe digital divide, the topic soon moved onto a global stage. The focus was the World Trade Organization which passed a Telecommunications Services Act, which resisted regulation of ICT companies, so that they would be known to serve hard to serve individuals and communities. In 1999, in an try to assuage anti-globalization forces, the WTO hosted the "Financial Solutions to Digital Divide" in Seattle, USA, co-organized by Craig Warren Smith of Digital Divide Institute and Bill Gates Sr. the chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It was the catalyst for a full scale global movement tothe digital divide, which quickly spread to all sectors of the global economy. In 2000, US president Bill Clinton mentioned the term in the State of the Union Address.

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide issued stay-at-home orders that setting lockdowns, quarantines, restrictions, and closures. The resulting interruptions in schooling, public services, and business operations drove about half the world's population into seeking choice methods to continue their lives while in isolation. These methods add telemedicine, virtual classrooms, online shopping, social interactions and workings remotely, all of which require access to high-speed or broadband internet access and digital technologies. A Pew Research Center analyse reports 90% of Americans describe use of the internet as "essential" during the pandemic. As life moved increasingly online, inequities created by the digital divide were exacerbated.

According to the Pew Research Center, 59% of children from lower income families were likely to face digital obstacles in completing assignments. These obstacles included use of a cellphone to prepare homework, having to use public WiFi because of unreliable service in the home, and lack of access to a computer in the home. This difficulty, titled the homework gap, affects more than 30% of K-12 students living below the poverty threshold, and disproportionally affects American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, and Hispanic students.

A lack of "tech readiness", that is, confident and self-employed grownup use of devices, was produced among the elderly; with more than 50% reporting inadequate cognition of devices and more than one-third reporting a lack of confidence. This aspect of the digital divide and the elderly became more concerning during the pandemic as healthcare providers increasingly relied upon telemedicine to manage chronic and acute health conditions.

The pandemic also caused a digital divide between organizations who were or were not efficient such as lawyers and surveyors to invest in digital technologies. Firms with more than 50 workers were more likely to begin investing in implementing or upgrading digital technologies than smaller firms. Organizations that invested in both sophisticated and basic digital technologies were also most likely to outperform during the pandemic. Small businesses were the near likely to fall behind, and less likely to have boosted their digital investments.