Points Of Interest: Resources Available, UK Divide, Global Divide, Other Areas Of Technology
The digital divide is divided into many aspects. One of which is geographical, how the divided changes from area to area be it in the same country or another country.
Between country to country technology and technology services can vary from perhaps offering different internet connection speeds.
t is clear that developed nations with the resources to invest in and develop IT infrastructure are reaping in enormous benefits from the information age, while developing nations are trailing along at a much slower pace. This difference in rates of technological progress is widening the economic inequality between the most developed nations of the world (primarily Canada, the United States, Japan, and
Western Europe) and the underdeveloped and developing ones (primarily Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. This geographical divide is often characterized as falling along what is sometimes called the north-south divide of "northern" wealthier nations and "southern" poorer ones.
The wealthier nations more often than not are first to offer new advances in technology (i.e. offering the latest games consoles before anyone else). These nations also tend to offer the biggest variance in technology like offering different models or a range of services.
However, for under-developing countries many parts of the technological world this seem to be something of the future for them. A prime example to show the variance between different parts of the world is internet connection speeds. For instance, currently in the UK speeds are constantly increasing and some are offering speeds of up to 24 mp/s (depending on availability in different areas). On 26th April, 2005 BBC news reported “Broadband reveals digital divide” on how the percentage of households currently with broadband installed varies across different areas of the UK and Wales.
In say less developed areas of the world such as Africa, these types of speeds are just not available. Speeds in parts of Africa are rarely ever higher than 56kp/s dial-up connection. There is an argument that say if high speed broadband became available in developing countries there would not be high enough demand to sustain services such as these. Another example of the global divide that exists is between UK and Bahrain. One of the first things you notice when you entering the country of Bahrain is how they are very much "one branded". What I mean by this is that there is a huge segment of the market based on one particular brand (i.e. Sony). A good example of this is that in Bahrain the only video games console they seem to sell is the Sony Playstation range. So in all of the electronics shops they do not sell other popular platforms from western parts of the world such as the XBox range. Every child in Bahrain seems to have a Playstation and when asked about other platforms they don't really know about them. Another form of the divide in Bahrain is the internet. You notice there that they receive 512kp/s internet whilst in the UK the internet speeds are about 8mb/s for the same type of market. Apple IPod's also demonstrate a divide between Bahrain and the UK where Bahrain only tend to sell IPod's of up to 2Gb, a limited range compared to the UK which offers up to 80Gb. When you look at operating systems you are very hard pushed to find anyone operating a system other than Microsoft across the whole item, bearing in mind that 9 in 10 people across the world operate a Microsoft operating system. More interestingly, many Bahraini locals do not seem fazed about there being any sort of divide. There are many reasons why a divide may exists such as the media spin and the economic state. With the media you notice that few company's widely advertise in Bahrain such as Sony, that it one of the reasons why Sony is a popular household item. Other reasons may be that companys have actively made the choice not the branch out various products in Bahrain because the product may not simply sell because of the economic state. As I mentioned before, this situation is very obvious with Apple and Microsoft as they are only selling a limited range of their products, only the ones that the market will want to buy.
The same principles apply to other areas of technology too. MP3 players for instance are something which now seems to be widely available in wealthier countries but are not available or as not widely available in developing countries. As with internet connection speeds is widely debated that in-fact should many technological services and products be available now in developing countries the economy would not be able to sustain them as the demand would be very little.
In conclusion it is sure that every part of the world is changing because of technology but the real question is when and maybe how parts of the world are going to be involved in changing with technology.