LOCUS 2012 Theme: Bridging the Digital Divide

Introduction to Digital Divide

While the information and  communication technologies (ICT) in  general, and the Internet and the world wide web in particular, have  made life easier by facilitating easy communication with virtually everyone, and easy access to information located  virtually anywhere in the  world,   they have also widened the  gap  between the rich and the  poor, the ‘have’ and the  ‘have  nots’.  In other words,   new technologies, while improving our life in many ways have created  what is called the ‘digital divide’. The rift between the ‘have’ and ‘have nots’ is even greater in the developing countries.  The digital divide has become a popular phrase to describe the perceived disadvantages of those who are either unable, or do not choose, to use the appropriate ICT in their day-to-day activities, decision making, learning and pleasure.

Although the Digital Divide has remained a hot topic along with the advent of advanced microcontroller based systems, the very identity of digital divide and the cause have been modified with time. At early days, when ICT was available to limited group of people, the rich ones only, Digital divide referred to the differences among the people having access to ICT and the ones deprived from this very technology. Later, the definition was changed as the differences between the people having access to the internet and the one out of the web. This change in the definition was marked by the easy availability of computers to locals. As the world grew older with the internet, the definition modified to the differences between the people who can understand and implement the information presented in the web and the ones who cannot do so.

The very existential definition of Digital Divide has been written different in different scenarios. There are terms such as second level digital divide and knowledge divide that  clarify the rift in the technological world. Although world is getting more and more into the web with the networks and websites, this has simultaneously increased the population who use only the superficial features that have been presented to them on the name of internet.

Undoubtedly, the digital divide has been talked a lot. Few governments are actually working on for it as well. There are some organizational level efforts being done too. But the effort is not enough. There are problems everywhere. There are a couple of groups of people assigned by the government to identify the solution. They find the solution too. What our event primarily focuses is modeling of the solution that the students find after doing their part of the research in the theme. These modeling shall be via hardware implementations, software implementations, paper presentations or talk shows.

We aim to find the right definition for digital divide in our present context and lead the youths of today’s society to find a solution for the same. The event shall also make the righteous suggestions to the corresponding authorities while implementing the national level policies in bridging the digital divide. The event shall solely present the state of the problem and the challenges to be faced while implementing the relevant solution tactics.

Present Scenario:

The world has shifted towards ICT revolution. Teaching and learning has been transformed from a teacher to student act to open learning interfaces, diagnosis has been transformed from doctor to patient thing to e-health services and the world is more connected than ever. Despite the fact that, most of the active involvement in the sector of ICT is controlled by small group of people, the ICT whim is at the peak now!

Nepal is a developing country. The rest of the world calls us the third world. There is not argument that can be put up against it. Our pace of development is far beyond what they call ‘slow’. While the developed communities have access to ICT at a statistical recoed of more than 600/1000, we belong to that 20% of the total population which earns less than $1 per day. The annual expenditure required for the access to sound ICT is calculated to be $120 per year. Our national income is approximately $365 per year. It is a great tragedy that people form society like ours have to pay 30% of their annual income to have an access to ICT while the rest of the world pays less than 2%. The challenges are fierce.

The literacy rate of our country is just 55%.After being sluggish for years, the current statistics for Internet penetration in our county has moved to 13%. The mobile penetration is Nepal has moved to 45% with mobile subscriber numbers having increased fivefold in just 4 years. As for broadband, subscriptions remain low consistent with a lowly penetrated internet market; broadband however represented around 75% of all internet connections by 2011.

The fact that development in the field of ICT can ease the other developmental works is accepted by the world now. Our country too needs to put its hands for this. The progress of development is simply more than just doubled when implemented with ICT. The current status of our country in the sector of ICT is less than the average as the statistics show. The instability of the country’s political scenario is playing a major role in determining the limit to which the ICT is implemented in the country. But we say, we have a very less space to complaint. The major concern is how much can we push ourselves in integra0ting our life with ICT? The event shall encourage the participants to go ahead and bridge the digital divide. This event shall challenge the local people to go for the change, for betterment and for the progress.

Digital Divide Issues:

We are the third world. We have few urban settlements but the major part is still deprived from development and ICT as a whole. Due to the varied developmental progress state across the country, there are several issues regarding the Digital Divide. We have dug few sectors on which digital divide have created an issue. Some of these are:

Language:
Language is a means of communication. The ICT sector being a global phenomenon is written in Standard English language. This, as a result causes national and ethnic problem to those who do not have knowledge of any other language than their mother tongue or the native language. The ICT related authorities of our country should look into this matter with grave importance.

IT Skills:
The IT aware population of our country is significantly low. The small amount of ICT aware people is not using ICT to rip its full services. Majority of these people are rather indulged in social networking and blogging arena. That is to say, the majority of ICT literate people in the context of our country are the passive ICT consumers. We aim to exploit the way by which these groups of people can use their limited knowledge and skills related to ICT to get most out of this field. We aim to take this population to the next level.

Education:
While the world is now onto distant learning and e-learning practices, our society still values schools as the ultimate source of knowledge and wisdom. Students in our country still have to depend upon their instructors for any sorts of learning process. While the world has accepted the fact that true knowledge does not have a single, dedicated source, the education system of our country is still traditional and technologically passive. We need to incorporate the popular learning trends to make ourselves up to the mark in the international arena.

Disability:
There is a countably finite group of population who are not fit physically. Their day to day life is even more challenging. They need to face obstacles where-ever they go, at schools, colleges, banks, clubs, corporate houses etc. The currently available resources do not have a special addressing to these communities and thus this social division has even more enlarged the rift in the technological world. The organizations working for such communities should implement ICT plans for these groups as well so as to produce ICT aware population.

Methodologies for Bridging the Digital Divide:

Our event aims to address the problems in the real life by the use of following solution approaches:

Usability:
The softwares should be simple and easy to use. They should have an easy interfacing so that everyone can use them easily in the grass root level. Since a large population of our country is not familiar with English language, the software in national language would help educate the people. Today when communication is possible in rural areas as well, making internet available in these areas would be a merit. Accessibility of internet is not going to enough, thus educating the people about computers is vital. Through e-learning in native language people would be benefitting. Also, through telemedicine and e-commerce, sectors other than education would be developed. Thus, ICT is proving to be important in bridging the gap.

E-learning and online education:

Distant learning approaches open the door to endless opportunities in the field of getting knowledge. The whole teaching and learning process becomes cheap, easy and reliable. To increase the education opportunities in the rural communities by creating tele-teaching and tele-training program and by making to e-learning materials accessible to students, teachers and villagers through e-libraries created by different organizations. Even when our society is passively lying down under the full moon, the ICT world is alive as ever which put a boundless opportunities to teaching and learning processes.

Communication:
The present context of our country is  such that majority of ICT users are confined to social networking sites only. They can be exploited in the better ways by implementing ICT in the communication sector. Implementation of online promotions and online business can help any entrepreneur succeed in his business and in his life. ICT approaches stand strong against the digital divide. This area is something on which few approaches have been implemented already.

E-health:
Most of the people in the rural areas are deprived of basic health cares due to the complexity in the geography of our country. Many turn disable because they don’t get cured in the right time. E-health can bring revolutionary changes in this sector by eliminating the necessity of a doctor or any other medical personnel while a medical diagnosis is being carried out. This will transform a lot of lives and create a better living.

Output:

ICT is proving to be the most effective medium in filling this gap. When communication and use of technology becomes accessible for wider range of people then the gap starts to reduce slowly. ICT is a revolution that has enormous social and economical implications for the developed and less developed countries in the world. For the developing countries , the global explosion of knowledge contains both opportunities and challenges. With communication cost plummeting, transferring of knowledge is becoming cheaper everyday thus giving new opportunity to these nations eliminated the gap of knowledge.

The technological event as a whole shall model the technological division in the current context of our country. Students will be brainstorming to seek solution to this division. They will be writing down the ideas and presenting them to the experts of our society. Other groups will be taking these ideas out of the paper and actually implement them in small scale in practical life as a part of the hardware competition. The software competition shall analyze the larger implementation aspects of methodologies to bridge the digital divide. All in all, every possible aspect shall get manipulated. As in any other competition, the winner of this event shall stand as the best modeling, application idea and best innovative concept respectively. These shall be the guiding pathways for the concerned authorities to implement the regional and the national level bridging actions.

These as a whole shall bring all the concerned authorities, governmental as well as nongovernmental, to work together, reducing the cost of research on one hand and putting forth clear head start in the relevant field. We believe these students who stand out of the normal crowd, shall lead the society tomorrow in the field of ICT revolution and to globalize the technology.