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The digital divide refers to the unequal access to the internet and its impact on society. Only 64% of people worldwide have internet access, with significant disparities between regions. The divide persists due to factors such as high device prices, lack of knowledge, and infrastructure limitations. It is divided into three types: access divide, use divide, and quality of use gap. Net neutrality plays a crucial role in ensuring equal access. Efforts to address the divide include infrastructure investments, digital literacy programs, affordable internet initiatives, and satellite projects. While progress has been made, more needs to be done to ensure internet access for all. Now, first, I want to talk about what the digital divide actually is and how it affects the world. So, the first time that I had ever heard of the digital divide was during a lecture on Tuesday, September 26th from Cliff Lampe, where he shared the fact that only 64% of people in the world have internet access. Now, that was baffling to me because it seems like everyone I know has internet access. Everybody they know has internet access. It just seems like one of those things, like food and water, that you just have. So that was pretty shocking to me, but then I did some further research and on iberdola.com it says that internet and access to the internet, known as the digital divide, affects 52% of women and 42% of men worldwide. This gap becomes even wider when we talk about regions. According to data taken from the internet portal WorldStats as of December 2021, in Africa only 43.1% of its inhabitants had internet access compared to 88.4% of Europeans and 93.4% of Americans. Now that is crazy. It seems as though there's so much that we do as a society that comes from the internet and uses the internet that I can't even imagine what it would be like not to have it at this point in my life. Now, a great question to ask would be where did this digital divide come from? Again, coming from iberdola.com. They said that the digital divide was initially attributed to the underdevelopment and was perceived as something temporary that would disappear with the popularization of technology. Instead, the divide persists today despite the mass marketing of electronic devices with internet access. The causes can range from high price of the above mentioned devices to the lack of knowledge about their use or the lack of infrastructure for their access. Now, I want to go into the different types of digital divide that iberdola.com says exist in the world today. First, I want to talk about the access divide. It refers to the possibilities that people have to access this resource. This is where socioeconomic differences between people and between countries come into play since digitization requires very costly investment in infrastructures for less developed regions and for rural areas. One thing that I kind of want to branch out on with this access divide is the concept of net neutrality. Now, for those of you that don't know what net neutrality is, the National Conference for State Legislators describes it as the concept that all data traffic on a network should be treated indiscriminately and internet service providers will be restricted from blocking, slowing down, or speeding up the delivery of online content at their discretion. Now, essentially what this means is that with net neutrality in place, it is illegal for different internet service providers to charge more for pretty much the same service. Loyola University in Maryland School of Education wrote an article where they bring up an interesting idea. They say that this sort of price discrimination is not an unfamiliar concept. You can pay a little extra for a movie ticket to get a more comfortable reclining seat. You can buy a FastPass at Disney World to skip the long lines. So why shouldn't this same concept be applied to the internet? Well, they bring up, they tie this back into schools and school districts and students and say that it's because access to high-quality internet-based resources should be available at all schools and all students, not just the schools and districts that can afford it. And you can think about that in the same way with people as well. These sorts of internet resources should be available to everybody, not just those that can afford the better resources, because this is an important resource that we should all have access to. As you can see, net neutrality is a huge factor in the digital divide, and maintaining that neutrality is very important in ensuring that we don't make it worse. Now, I want to go back to that article by iberdole.com where they talk about the digital divide. We just talked about the access divide, but I want to talk about the other two now. First, they bring up the use divide. They say it refers to the lack of digital skills, which impedes the handling of technology. They give the example that the ITU points out that there are 40 countries in which more than half of their inhabitants do not know how to attach a file to an email. Similarly, iberdole.com talks about the quality of use gap. Sometimes they have the digital skills to find their way around the internet, but they do not have the knowledge to make good use of it and get the most out of it. I think this is maybe something we have all seen, looking at our grandparents, maybe trying to use Facebook or something, right? They know their way around, but they don't know how to make the best use out of it. They don't know really what they're doing and could use some extra knowledge and training and education on how to really use these resources to be the best for them. As you can see, the digital divide is a clear issue that affects so many people in this world. It affects, you know, the question, what can be done to fix it? This seems like a very, very complex problem, right? That might not have one set solution. Well, I'll give you some examples of some things that are being done right now and could be done in the future to help deal with this problem. Baxar Chakravorty wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled, How to Close the Digital Divide in the U.S. He starts off by talking about really what the problem is, kind of similar to what we've discussed, and then talks about specifically Joe Biden's American Jobs Plan that is a significant step in addressing one of the country's most pressing, deeply rooted, and often overlooked problems, the digital divide. He says the plan contains a $65 billion budget spread over eight years to help close the gaps in digital infrastructure. Now this is a major investment, he says, but unfortunately, he feels that it still falls well short of what's needed to actually solve the problem. According to his analysis, the budget should have been two and a half times large as the original $100 billion, and yet they settled at just $65 billion. Now yes, obviously this is a step in the right direction, but it is not enough. Now if a $65 billion budget over eight years is not enough to close the gap, what could it be? Well, again, I want to go back to Iberdrola and their article on the Digital Divide and talk about some things that they bring up in addition to this infrastructure plan. First, they talk about digital literacy programs, which essentially is just programs that help instruct people on less favored areas of internet use to improve their personal well-being. So kind of like how I mentioned with your grandparents, you know, if they had some classes, maybe they could learn better, and this applies to everybody. Then they talk about the Alliance for Affordable Internet, this project led by an international coalition of governments, businesses, and civil society aims to lower the cost of broadband service in certain areas like Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Now this kind of goes back to the infrastructure problem. We just need to give people the ability to access internet first before we can start on those digital literacy programs. This kind of goes to the next point they bring up about there should be free access to basic internet. This initiative promoted by Facebook and six other tech companies aims to provide free access to a number of websites through a mobile application. And then Starlink. Starlink is a project promoted by the tycoon Elon Musk, which is launching satellites into space to provide high-speed internet and global coverage at affordable prices. Now obviously you can see that there are things being done, but the question is whether this is enough or not. And I don't think so. I think that going forward we need to put more time, more resources, and more effort into closing this digital divide because internet access should be a right available to everybody and it's important that we all have the ability to use the internet. So that's it for me today, guys. I appreciate you listening to my talk on the digital divide. Obviously this is something I'm very passionate about and I really hope that you feel informed after this. So thank you so much and tune in next time. I'm your host, Jonah Fitzgerald, and this was another episode of The Fitzgerald Show. Thank you.