Blog Post 2: Will the Smart Phone Help Eliminate the Digital Divide?

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, proclaims “Given the cost of the device, it is very conceivable that every child, rich or poor, can have one 24/7. Smart phones are the one technology that can eliminate the digital divide.”

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

Source: http://thejournal.com/Articles/2011/02/01/Will-Smart-Phones-Eliminate-the-Digital-Divide.aspx?Page=1