David Nagel’s article on the digital divide brings some
good points to the table. He talks about how the smart phone is helping reduce
the divide. He thinks that eventually smart phones will be the remedy for the
digital divide, and completely eliminate it all together. Elliot Soloway, a
professor at the University
of Michigan
The new generation of kids is interested in smart phones
and I think we need to start teaching them more in school how to use the
devices to its full potential. Since it is affordable and the phones have
Wi-Fi, they can access the internet almost everywhere they go. Another positive
attribute to the smart phones is that they are, for the most part, durable. If
you drop it, it is most likely to be fine. You can also apply a case to the
smart phone which practically makes indestructible. When you drop a laptop the
outcome is far more different. Laptops also can be infected with viruses which
can cause it to need repairs that cost a good amount of money. The smart phone
is not capable of getting viruses.
“What the kids can do and how the kids can do it has
changed,” says Elliot Soloway, “For the first time in history, there is a
device at a student-affordable price point that has sufficient computing power
and networking to support 90 [percent] to 95 percent of what a student does in
school every day.”
If teachers are worried about kids texting in class then
they need to invent a router that automatically switches all the kids’ smart
phones to an airplane-like mode, in a certain area, so that all the phone can
do is access internet. The next level up from a smart phone is the ipad and it
is a great tool, but the costs outnumber the benefits. I do not think that it
will ever eliminate the digital divide, unless they lower the costs making it
more accessible.
If we are looking to get rid of the digital divide, we would
also need Net Neutrality to stay in place. With the loss of Net Neutrality the
poor would not be able to do anything on the internet because of the higher
prices. This would in fact make the digital divide even greater. Some poor
families would just scratch the idea of buying a computer or a smart phone all
together because they can’t afford Internet.
-Clay
