‘Digital Divide’
‘Digital Divide’ is a term that is known as ‘digital split’ and it means the inequality between the people who have the resources and can access the new information and communication tools easily by the technology and the people who do not have resources and access to the technology. For example – Internet is the technology which provides the latest information and we can do anything by the help of internet by just one click. Thus the digital divide exists between the people who can access technology and those who cannot access. But in actually, digital divide is not only limited to the internet. In fact, it means the access of information and communication technologies and media of way for accessing any type of information by the different segments of the society. For example – In some countries, telephone is considered as the basic requirement for communication and that is mostly used in the government offices. But unfortunately, there are some countries which do not have the sufficient telephone lines for the communication. So in this example – we can use the digital divide which shows the advancement of the one country and less progress of the other country. Besides it, digital divide shows the discrepancy between those people also who has the ability, skills and knowledge to uses these resources and technology as compare to those who have the access of these resources but they do not have the ability and knowledge to use it. In short, we can say that it is easy to notice digital divide between the people who lives in rural areas and those who live in urban areas, between who are educated and those are not educated to use the technologies, between the different economic scales of the persons and besides that, it exist at the global level also where some nations are industrially developed and some are less developed.
It is an emerging social issue for the policy makers, scholars and others because it divides the people on the basis of the availability of resources, latest technology and its usage. It shows the differences among the development and developing and underdeveloped areas. In digital divide, the people who are untouched and not able to access the resources and technologies are affected most because they do not have update information. It may include the individuals, organisations, schools, hospitals, nations, or any other institution. But these people are affected in a very negative way because it creates economic, social and growth inequality between those who have the access and literacy and those who do not have the access and literacy for use it and it results that they are not able to connect with the world of freedom, democracy and are not able to avail the other benefits that help a person to make a tension free, easy going and free life.
The effects of digital divide can be noticed between the businesses which traditionally work under brick-mortar structure but now these are upgraded to e-business. Some businesses still run on the manual works and on paper without use of computer and other technology. Thus we can see the processing and operations of the business are slow because the flow of information is slow and it makes the decision making also slow. Thus we can say that digital divide creates the gap between the businesses and affect the performance and growth of the business in negative way.
References
http://www.internetworldstats.com/links10.htmhttps://sites.google.com/site/digdivide1/how-digital-divide-affects-businesses-and-social-capabilities
