Though it is called the Digital Divide, it's such an large gap between those with internet access and those without that the gap seems exaggerated. There's a "spectrum" that everyone in the world falls on. At one end are the people who have the money and the access to good, fast internet. At the other end of the spectrum are the people that perhaps live in third world countries where it's nearly impossible to get access to the internet, and maybe some of these people don't even know what the internet is.
As citizens of the United States, allegedly "the greatest country" in the world, the majority of us have some access to the internet and it's use is so widespread that we hardly even think about it. Most of the students here have an internet-accessible phone and overtime we've become so used to immediate interact access that we're reaching the point of invisible privilege.
Two weeks ago, my family and I visited our cabin in the Poconos for the weekend. And when I say cabin, I mean cabin, not a house. It is an authentic cabin built in the 70's featuring bright orange shag carpet, no lie on that one. Unfortunately for us, that weekend was bitter cold, around 10 degrees Fahrenheit and the water pipes had frozen and burst, leaving us without running water. And because the cabin doesn't have central heating, we had to use a coal burning stove. We went to the store to buy 9 gallons of water to use as efficiently as we could. We even had to "ration" our toilet flushes because we didn't have enough water to flush it every time. (TMI, whatever)
Anyways, my dad knows a lot about plumbing and he works around the house a lot so over the course of the weekend he would tell my sister and I tips and facts about how the water travels through the pipes, and so on and so forth. And once, while we were talking about saving our water for toilet flushes, my dad told us that toilets use about five gallons of water every time it's flushed. Some of the newer toilets, he went on to tell us, are using less than two gallons now, which is much more efficient, obviously.
Then my sister chimed in and remarked how there are people living in poorer countries that are surviving on one gallon of water a day, while over here in the US we're using five gallons just to flush a toilet. And of course, immediately after she said that, all of us felt really shitty about it, but that's the thing about privilege - you don't really know what you have until you learn that something you've taken for granted could very possibly be an inaccessible luxury for others.
I saw a post online that really kind of puts things in perspective and it said something along the lines of, "In the US, we have huge fountains full of running water that we literally throw money into and all the while there are people in other countries dying of things like dehydration and malnourishment."
Bringing this back to CMC, we talk about 2014, and the 21st century in general, as an era of the internet and unsurpassed technology. We have eyeglasses that can connect to the internet and we even have wireless internet in our cars. As a country, we are so technologically and industrially advanced that it's baffling, and almost unbelievable that there people who can't afford to put a meal on the table, yet alone having internet access.
The fact that it's baffling alone is another shining example of the privilege that we have. The US as a country is only going to continue making advances in technology, and the digital disparity is only going to keep growing. And as we advance, by comparison, third world countries seem to regress. I don't think there's one simple solution to bridge such a large gap, but with all the advancements we're making, hopefully we can one day do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment