Digital Divide the United Nations

¶ … Digital Divide

The United Nations and the Effort to Reduce the Digital Divide:

The United Nations first announced its intention to address the digital divide on a global scale in 2001, with the goal of establishing information and communication technologies (ICT) throughout the underdeveloped regions of the world by 2015 (Hesseldahl, 2005). Despite the proclamations of moral principle and the best of intentions by the United Nations, the initial impetus for meaningful progress toward the goal of reducing the digital divide and the bulk of the actual progress in that direction have come from private entities and charitable enterprises rather than the United Nations (Hesseldahl, 2005).

Private Entities and the International Effort to Reduce the Digital Divide:

Companies such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have already begun projects intended to reduce the digital divide. Since 2004, AMD has produced an inexpensive stripped down personal computer-type device called a personal Internet communicator (PIC) designed to increase Internet access and connectivity in less developed regions (Hesseldahl, 2005). Since then, AMD has joined forces with high-profile advocate for the global poor, U-2 singer, Bono; together, they have been actively working toward the goal of connecting every hospital, health clinic, and school in Ethiopia to the Internet (Hesseldahl, 2005).

India's biggest telecom company, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) collaborated with AMD in the PIC project, as did Caribbean Cable and Wireless and Mexican Telecom in South America. More recently, several other similar initiatives have produced similar devices with the same goal. For example, the organizational mission of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is "To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future" (OLPC, 2009).

Successful Bridging of the Digital Divide:

While the various private and international initiatives meant to reduce the digital divide are commendable in their intentions, it may very well be that the biggest factor is more a function of the natural rate of technological development. Specifically, cell phone use has already become extremely widespread, even in some of the most impoverished regions in the world (Corbett, 2008). Already, more than half of the world's entire population has telephone access, of whom most have cellular telephones (Hesseldahl, 2005). That is particularly significant because sociologists have identified cellular telephone access as one of the most important factors that has increased the earning potential of individuals living in some of the poorest communities in the world (Corbett, 2008).