Global Digital Divide - Concrete Examples of The Global Digital Divide

Concrete Examples of The Global Digital Divide

In the early 21st century, residents of First World countries enjoy many Internet services which are not yet widely available in Third World countries, including:

  • In tandem with the above point, mobile phones and small electronic communication devices;
  • E-communities and social-networking;
  • Fast broadband Internet connections, enabling advanced Internet applications;
  • Affordable and widespread Internet access, either through personal computers at home or work, through public terminals in public libraries and Internet cafes, and through wireless access points;
  • E-commerce enabled by efficient electronic payment networks like credit cards and reliable shipping services;
  • Virtual globes featuring street maps searchable down to individual street addresses and detailed satellite and aerial photography;
  • Online research systems like LexisNexis and ProQuest which enable users to peruse newspaper and magazine articles that may be centuries old, without having to leave home;
  • Electronic readers such as Kindle, Sony Reader, Samsung Papyrus and Iliad by iRex Technologies;
  • Price engines like Google Shopping which help consumers find the best possible online prices, and similar services like ShopLocal which find the best possible prices at local retailers;
  • Electronic services delivery of government services, such as the ability to pay taxes, fees, and fines online.
  • Further civic engagement through e-government and other sources such as finding information about candidates regarding political situations.

Read more about this topic:  Global Digital Divide

Famous quotes containing the words concrete, examples, global and/or divide:

    “Poetry presents indivisible wholes of human consciousness, modified and ordered by the stringent requirements of form. Prose, aiming at a definite and concrete goal, generally suppresses everything inessential to its purpose; poetry, existing only to exhibit itself as an aesthetic object, aims only at completeness and perfection of form.”
    —Richard Harter Fogle, U.S. critic, educator. The Imagery of Keats and Shelley, ch. 1, University of North Carolina Press (1949)

    “No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.”
    —André Breton (1896–1966)

    “However global I strove to become in my thinking over the past twenty years, my sons kept me rooted to an utterly pedestrian view, intimately involved with the most inspiring and fractious passages in human development. However unconsciously by now, motherhood informs every thought I have, influencing everything I do. More than any other part of my life, being a mother taught me what it means to be human.”
    —Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)

    “... it is a rather curious thing to have to divide one’s life into personal and official compartments and temporarily put the personal side into its hidden compartment to be taken out again when one’s official duties are at an end.”
    —Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)