Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide. By Mark Warschauer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Pp. 272.
Key
Ron - black text
Julz – purple text and I bolded some of Ron’s text
Amy – Summaries in Blue with questions/comments in orange
Robin – comments in green
Joe – comments in red (maraschino)
Technology and Social Inclusion ts out to re-examine the notion of the digital divide, moving beyond the term玉子豆腐’s implications of a division between the technological “高科手机haves” and “have-nots”. Focusing on largely ethnographic data on technological development projects from around the world, author Mark Warschauer argues that instead of approaching ICT de
velopment with a binary model, the potential and effectiveness of ICT development are best understood in the multi-level scalable “interction of ICT and social inclusion” (p. 9). With a particular emphasis on relevant content and usage, Warschauer argues that new technologies are required social inclusion which, in today’s information economy, leads to community control and empowerment.
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Technology and Social Inclusion draws on Warschauer’s empirical rearch across a range of technology initiatives from diver countries. Examples from Hawai’i, Egypt, India, China, Brazil, and the United States paint a broad picture of different projects and outcomes, illustrating clearly that no single model of technology development holds the key to success. Supplemented with macro-level statistics on economic factors, social patterns, and technology u patterns, the volume successfully demonstrates a need for integrating social context, purpo and organization into the types of projects.
The book’s first chapter outlines the “new information economy and network society” that drives the inclusion and exclusion of different populations. Warschauer argues that new i人居环境整治实施方案
nformation technologies are an “esntial medium that supports other forms of production, participation and social development” (p. 30) and are critical to addressing gaps among different groups bad on income, education, culture, and geography. Chapter two examines models of access to the technologies and suggests that instead of basing notions of access on devices or conduits, a literacy model bad on social context can address the multiple social, economic, human, and digital resources that affect the “小辉哥火锅effective u of ICTs to access, adapt, and create knowledge”蛋白粉怎么吃 (p. 47).
Chapters three through six examine each of the resources in turn, identifying critical aspects of each type. Chapter three reviews data on physical resources, demonstrating that in many cas the simple prence of new technologies do not address inequalities in their utility. Missing in his discussion is the crucial role that technology producers have played in defining solutions to digital inclusion, such as Microsoft’s lf-rving efforts to inrt their technology into classrooms and community centers and expand their market, with little regard to training.
Chapter four examines digital resources, summarizing trends in available web content by topic, language, and structure. Through a detailed and compelling discussion of language and literacy in the context of the web, Warschauer shows the ways in which the web “春季食谱does not necessarily meet the needs of diver communities around the world” (p. 81), including locally relevant information, information at a basic literacy level, non-English language content, and more diver cultural resources.
Chapter five outlines the human resources that affect social inclusion, focusing on literacy and education. This chapter, one of the most thorough and theoretically interesting in the book, emphasizes the role of social control and empowerment in both computer education and various types of literacy, including computer, information, multimedia, and CMC literacy. This chapter would have rved better as a general framework from which to examine the issues Warschauer identifies in his book instead of buried in the middle. Chapter six, which address social resources, examines community strengths and difficulties in a framework of social capital. Drawing from examples from political, civic and cultural projects, he points out that while the internet can help communities mobilize,
expand social capital, and improve contact, it can prent dangers like incread surveillance, extreme narrowcasting and information filters, and social isolation.
outline
Introduction
p. 2 – The Rest of the Story: The Hole in the Wall was such an inspirational story, however, hearing the rest of the story was also telling: “In short, parents and the community came to realize that minimally invasive education was, in practice, minimally effective education.”
p. 4 – An Information Age Town: “In the end, according to a rearcher from University College Dublin, the three runners-up, which each had received only one-fifteenth of the money that Ennis received, actually had more to show for their efforts to promote social inclusion through technology than did the winner.” In this ca, a community was given technology, like the hole-in-the-wall experiment, where the devices were given greater im
portance than the actual social structure and practice of the community. It was an answer to a problem most of the community wasn’t asking.
