Blog Discussion on Digital Divide

#22:

Have you even encountered the ‘digital divide’ in your own lives? Give an example from your own experience (or one you have heard about).

I had erroneously believed that digital divide refers to the gap between those who have access to digital technology and those who do not, but I have come to realized that it goes beyond accessibility to technology, but benefits derived from it. That being said, I wish to give an example from my own life experience, how I encountered the ‘digital divide’ without even knowing about it then, until later date.

While I was in the high school in my village in Nigeria, we had a class on “computer appreciation”. In this class, we were taught the general functionality of the computer and other communication devices like the telephone, telex, and microfiche machines etc. We were taught how the computer receives information from the user, process the information, store the information and get back the result, how various businesses uses the computer to communicate each others, who are miles apart. We loved the computer, memorize its functions, and we can describe it without having access to the computer. One faithful day, old students of the school donated an old computer to the school. The computer was stationed in a table in what was called the ‘modern office’, because there you could find electric typewriter and other lab equipment, which were never used because there was no electricity in the school to use them. The teacher will take us to the modern office, showed us round the computer and explained how it function. We were very happy then, though we had no hand-on practice on the computer, but then we were not worried because the computer really did not have any meaningful benefit to us apart from knowing theoretically how it works. There was no electricity in the village, now good health facility, apart from occasional visit from the health officials from the headquarters of the local council to the village, no government amenities in the village, no telephone services, no presence of even private business apart from the local farmers selling their goods.

Until I came to Lagos after completing my high school when I discovered that we were really in darkness as to what ‘magic’ the computer, telephone and electricity were being used for in the city. All what we were taught in the village school was being practically used by almost everyone in the city – in the schools, at home, in various offices, people have unrestricted access to various digital technology for business transaction, for communication, especially the internet. Students come home to do their homework assignments in the computer, save it and reuse again. So in the city, they have access to these technology, and those that could not afford it borrow money to buy a computer because of the benefits they get from it, while those in the village do not think of getting it because it will be useless having it a home or in school without using them, it is of no benefit to them. They have no electricity to operate them, and when electricity was eventually given to the village, it was very erratic, not stable and there was hardly any day without interruption. The people in the village were only struggling to feed their families and pay for the tuition of their children. There was no government assistance to the education of their children, the infrastructure and school equipment were not being provided by the government to the schools in the village. This is why I strongly agree with the fact that digital divide is not so much about access to digital technology, but about the benefits derived from it. If the people know that there is little or nothing to benefit from owing or using these technology, they will not go for it and if the manufacturers of these technology knows there is no market for them in the village, they will not make any attempt to supply them and the gap will never be reduced or closed.

#23:

What role should government play in helping to overcome the digital divide? What role should school play? Can you thin of any other institutions that are important in helping to overcome the digital divide?

It is absolutely necessary now to close the digital divide that is prevalent everywhere in the world, and to do this, there must be a collaboration between the stake holders – the government, the schools, the private investors, and even the family. The government has more important role to play in order to reduce this gap. The government should first of all know that access to digital technology greatly enhances the effectiveness and affordability of efforts to improve the basic life necessity to the poor – electricity, water supply, improve rural health and education, and generate jobs. The government should therefore work very closely with the private sector to encourage them to develop these technologies and make them affordable to the rural people. The private sector should be given encouragement and incentive like tax cut to do this. While the government is doing this, it should be seen that every efforts is also being made to provide these basic life amenities. Government should make the people in the rural area know that they have some stake in the stability of the international economy. They should even encourage the farmers in the rural area, by providing them with fertilizers to cultivate their farms. The government should formulate policies that will entice the private and corporate organizations to want to close this digital divide and serve the poor.

The schools also have an important role to play. Their primary responsibility is awareness and education. The individual technology user, the information technology corporations and other investor institutions are all product of schools. Therefore the schools should take steps to close the digital divide for its students. One way they could do this is the provision of laptop computers with free Internet service so that they will bring computer technology into the homes of many of their students. The schools should train their students on how to use the computers and make them know the importance of computers. The school should contact corporate organizations and solicit for donation of computers and other technologies. The schools should arrange for their students to visit presentations of technology by computer companies. The school should encourage their students to do their homework on the computer. By doing this, the school will bring new technology into the lives of low to moderate income families and also introduce the youths and their families to technology. This will ensure that digital businesses opportunities are created and there is likelihood that educated students might want to stay in the community and work there.

Another institution that will be very helpfu; in ensuring that the gap in digital divide is narrowed or closed is the corporate organizations or the private sectors. These bodies should also make some efforts to close the digital divide as a core business issues They can actually serve the poor indirectly by helping schools and health care agencies do a better job of serving the poor. They could be involved, by funding technology in schools. They should cooperate with the government and the schools as well as other stake holders, to ensure that all efforts being made to close the gap is being supported by the corporate organization and the private sectors. They should see this digital divide as a great concern to them and therefore expressed their concern about the digital divide and instruct their corporate foundations to devise programs that will put this concern into action. These organizations should conduct its educational research in the community, to enable them understand the end users better. Multinationals should engage the poorest consumers directly to help build positive ties with the businesses and government agencies.

Effect on Media Technology on our experience

Question #20:

Pick one media technology, and say how you think it has had an effect on our experience.

I would like to pick the printing press as one media technology, which I think has had a tremendous effect on our experience. Mcluhan said that the printing press was the first mechanization of a complex handicraft; and by creating an analytic sequence of step-by-step processes; it became the blueprint of all mechanization to follow. I will agree with Mcluhan here that prating press has repeatability as one of the important quality. Printing press has actually transformed the world since Gutenberg. Printing press ensure the modernization of industrialism, it shape the production and marketing procedures of all sectors from education to city planning. Printing press removed man from his traditional cultural tribal believe and showed him how be industrialized, modernized, and agglomerated. Through the printing press, man now knows how to read and write, what is happening in other nations. Through printing press, the spread of renaissance of culture after 1450 was accelerated; growing economic prosperity, which was as a result of peace and the decline of famine, which led to the founding of schools and colleges, was made possible by the printing press. The printing press made information readily available to a much larger segment of the population who were eager for information of any variety. Libraries could not store greater quantities of information at much lower cost. The printing press facilitated the dissemination and preservation of knowledge in standardized form. This is one of the significant effects on our experience, as it certainly initiated an information revolution. It did spread new ideas quickly and with greater impact. Printing press stimulated the literacy of lay people and eventually came to have a deep and lasting impact on our private lives. It provided a superior basis for scholarship and prevented further corruption of texts through hand copying. By giving all scholars the same text to work form, it made progress in critical scholarship and science faster and more reliable. In the view of the above, it is absolutely correct to say that the printing press, as one of the medical technology has had an effect on our experience.

Question #21:

Pick one sentence or phrase in the Mcluhan interview that you find interesting or important. Say why you picked it.

In the past, the effects of media were experienced more gradually, allowing the individual and society to absorb and cushion their impact to some degree. I found this sentence interesting and important because the electric media of today constitute a total and near-instantaneous transformation of culture, values and attitudes which actually generates a great pain and identity loss, which can really be ameliorated through a conscious awareness of its dynamics. Mcluhan is saying here that if we understand the revolutionary transformations caused by new media, we can anticipate and control them, but we continue in self-induced subliminal trance, we will be their slaves. Mcluhan is trying to trace and reveal the impact of media on man, from the beginning of recorded time to the present. The new technology was supposed to aid man in doing things more easily, with less time and labor and with more efficiency, but man has totally depended on the new technology to an extent that we are now slaves to the new technology. People now want technology to think for us. Technology is now controlling us instead of us controlling technology. Mcluhan is saying that societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media with which men communicate than by the content of the communication, and whenever a society develops an extension of itself, all other functions of that society tend to be transmuted to accommodate that new form; once any new technology penetrates a society, it saturates every institution of that society, hence new technology becomes a revolutionizing agent. This is very evident in today’s electric media and it was evidence several thousand years ago with the invention of the phonetic alphabet.

Conceptual Muddle

Question #18

Think of your own example of a ‘conceptual muddle’. Explain your example.

An example of a ‘conceptual muddle’ is the use of ‘atomic bomb’ against Japan by the US during the 2^nd world war. Conceptual muddle principles implies practical dilemma, problems; which implied that if we do not know what we are dealing with, we do not know which rules or principles we should be apply. In the example of the atomic bomb, it is true that the Japanese attacked the US’s Pear Harbor, destroyed their fleet and struck other US bases. It is also a fact that the US was very interested in stopping the Soviet by all means, and it was a fact that the US wanted to test their atomic bomb to put fear into the mind of their enemies and proof that they are the strongest, technologically, militarily and more superior in the whole world, without knowing the overall consequences. The US also gave the reason of wanting to save lives; hence they used the atomic bomb against a nation, who was already finding ways of making peace. The President of the United States then also gave reason of the casualty estimate of death given to him that made him use the atomic despite some disagreement with his cabinet to find alternative option instead of using the bomb. So in the above scenario, one can find a conceptual muddle of using atomic bomb prevent the US from using the conventional means to win the war, instead they used the atomic bomb to destroyed millions of civilians. Conceptual muddle here explains why the atomic bomb was used without even informing the Japanese of their intention to use it.

Question #19:

After reading the Machado case, what are your thoughts on our responsibilities as ‘online citizens?

After reading the Machado case, I have a strong thought and believe that online citizens do not understand their online responsibilities. It is our responsibilities to recognize that any unlawful content on the Internet lies with the person who put it there. Our responsibilities call for vigilance, we must be vigilant to identify any unlawful and illegal online contents and reports immediately to the appropriate authorities concerned. Many of us do nothing when we found something on the Internet that we thought was illegal and this will not help in combating this hate crime. What we do is delete the content without doing anything about it.

Jessica Hendrie-Liano, Chair of the Internet Services Providers Association (ISPA) said “The law recognizes those that post words, image, audio and video files – whether on websites, discussion forums or even using email – as having the same responsibility as publishers. Internet users must understand that they bear responsibility for the content they place online.” This is what Machado did not realize.

Above all, it is our responsibility not to harm other people with the use of Internet, we should not interfere with the life of other people with the use of Internet, we should not steal the joy and happiness of others, we should always think about the social consequences of the use of Internet, and the ethical implications, and we should always use the Internet in a way that insure consideration and respect for our fellow human beings.

Discussion on Human Cloning

Blog Question #15:

Whom did you find to be most persuasive on the subject of cloning? Wachbroit or Kass? Explain your answer.

The subject of cloning has generated a lot of concerns and debates among Scientists, Theologians, Physicians, Legal experts, commentators, and even governments. Among these are Leon Kass and Wachbroit. Though both of them are against human cloning, but the one I found to be most persuasive on the subject of cloning is Leon Kass.

In his article on preventing a Brave New World, Kass argued that modern medical science is poised to cross an ethical boundary that will have momentous consequences for the future of humanity. He went further to say that “the technological imperative, liberal democratic society, compassionate humanitarianism, moral pluralism, and free markets” are leading us down a path that places us at risk of losing our humanity. Kass went a step further to recommend a worldwide ban on human cloning as a means of deterring “renegade scientists” from engaging in the practice.

I found him to be the most persuasive than Wachbroit because of the reasons he adduced for speaking against human cloning and the way he gave a vivid and thorough discussion on the subject. Amongst the reasons he gave was that cloning constitute unethical experimentation; it threatens identity and individuality; cloning turns procreation into manufacturing, and that cloning is despotism over children and perversion of parenthood.

Kass argued further that there is greatly increased likelihood of error in translating the genetic instructions leading to developmental defects, some of which will show themselves only much later. He also said that scientist new agree that attempts to clone human beings carry massive risk of producing unhealthy, abnormal and malformed children. He concluded by saying that attempt to clone human being is irresponsible and unethical.

In discussing unethical experimentation, Kass said that in all the animal experiments, there are many fetal deaths and still born infants; there is a very high incident of major disabilities and deformities in cloned animals than attain live births, that cloned cows often have heart and lung problems, cloned mice later develop pathological obesity, and that other live-born cloned animals fail to reach normal developmental milestones.

On the problems of identify and individuality, Kass cited an example of inability of parent to treat a clone of himself or herself as one treats a child generated by the lottery of sex. He went further to ask what will happen when the adolescent clone of mommy becomes the spitting image of the woman with whom Daddy once fell in love? Kass said that any child whose being, character and capacities exist owing to human design does not stand on the same plane as its makers, and that human cloning is dehumanizing no matter good the product is because the scientists and the prospective parents adopts a technocratic attitude toward human children, therefore become their artifacts. He said that clone human being would further be degraded by commodification of allowing baby making to proceed under the banner of commerce. He also stressed the fact that a cloned child is given a genotype that has already lived, a wanted child who exists precisely to fulfill parental wants. Therefore cloning is inherently despotic, for it seeks to make one’s children after one’s own image or an image of one’s choosing and their future according to one’s will.

In view of the above and so many other reasons Kass advanced, I am very sure and I agreed with all his reasons that he has persuaded us enough to believe his opinions on the subject of cloning than Wachbroit, who though is against human cloning, but was always looking for something to disagree with Kass, while postulating his own reasons. I think at the end, the fears, anxiety and concerns of critiques against human cloning, as well as their arguments are enough to actually enact a worldwide ban on human cloning.