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access to technology

Turning Off the Internet: Protest Edition (links)

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Egypt: ‘If you want to liberate a country, give them the internet’.  “Wael Ghonim, the young Google executive who has became a symbol of Egypt’s pro-democracy uprising after he launched the original Facebook page credited with sparking the initial protest, called the Egyptian upheaval, ‘Revolution 2.0.'”  (via Wired)

Libya: ‘Shutting off the Internet seems to be one of the last things in the playbook in terms of a dictator that’s being threatened by uprisings.’ “In particular, an Internet blackout in Libya will make it tougher for people outside the country to know how the uprising is unfolding. That was likely the government’s main motivation in shutting down the Internet in a country where people are more likely to communicate using cell phones.” (via MSNBC)

Algeria: ‘The government doesn’t want us forming crowds through the internet.’ “The Algerian government later denied that access to the internet or social networking websites had suffered any disruption or restriction on its part. A spokesman for the Algerian Embassy in London dismissed the claim as ‘baseless’. Meanwhile Facebook said there was no evidence of notable disruptions to their service, nor of accounts being deleted.  But a spokesman for Algerian internet monitor Remyses said: ‘It is possible that the blockages of the internet were not visible from abroad, according to the Iranian ‘strangulation’ model or by the cutting of domestic connections.'” (via The Telegraph)

Tunisia: ‘The problem is not filtering, the problem is who filters and based on what law.’ “At first, the regime banned around 300 websites, but as internet use grew throughout the country –- from 1 percent of the population in 2000 to 37 percent as of last November –- the blacklist bloated to more than 2,000. When the government started going after proxies, Saadaoui said, the number jumped to many thousands. He estimated that around a thousand of the blocked sites were political, and the rest were proxies.” (via Wired)

Wisconsin: a violation of free speech? : “Former Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Charles Hoornstra said that, if Walker is blocking the website, it could be a violation of state and federal laws concerning free speech laws. The accusation by the Wisconsin Democratic Party accompanies an accusation by the Teaching Assistants Association that Wisconsin state authorities cut off wifi access to a room they had taken over as a headquarters inside of the Capitol.” (via ThinkProgress)

See also: Egypt and the Internet (RWX)

Five Links Looking at the Digital Divide

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What is the Digital Divide?  Depends on who you ask.

The digital divide, like many other economic or social problems, is a global issue.  “From the most switched on countries such as Sweden to the poorest nations in Africa there is a widening gap between those with access to technology and those without.  The gap between countries on the same continent is also getting wider.”  (via BBC News)

It’s also a national one. “Despite the growing importance of the Internet in American life, 28.3 percent of all persons do not use the Internet in any location, down from 31.6 percent in 2009.” (via GigaOm)  According to the recent Commerce Department report, “persons with high incomes, those who are younger, Asians and Whites, the more highly-educated, married couples, and the employed tend to have higher rates of broadband use at home. Conversely, persons with low incomes, seniors, minorities, the less-educated, non-family households, and the non-employed tend to lag behind other groups in broadband use.”  (via Government Computer News)

It’s not just about broadband.  “Today, as mobile technology puts computers in our pockets, Latinos and blacks are more likely than the general population to access the Web by cellular phones, and they use their phones more often to do more things.  But now some see a new ‘digital divide’ emerging — with Latinos and blacks being challenged by more, not less, access to technology. It’s tough to fill out a job application on a cellphone, for example. Researchers have noticed signs of segregation online that perpetuate divisions in the physical world. And blacks and Latinos may be using their increased Web access more for entertainment than empowerment.” (via AP/USA Today)

And it’s cultural.  “There’s a concept in sociology called ‘homophily.’ It means birds of a feather stick together. Whites know whites. Democrats know Democrats. Urbanites know urbanites. Tech people know tech people. Rich people know rich people. And before you immediately start listing the people you know that aren’t like you, realize that this is the auto-reaction to an uncomfortable reality (more colloquially noticeable when people refer to ‘my black friend…’). Structurally, social networks are driven by homophily even when there are individual exceptions. And sure enough, in the digital world, we see this manifested right before our eyes.” (danah boyd)

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