Talk:Global digital divide

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[edit] Some things are missing

Yo everyone:

It looks like this article fails to mention actual concrete examples of the global digital divide. Here are a few I have encountered in my travels around the world:

(1) Maps - I can easily obtain a map of every street address in the United States, and even satellite, aerial, and ground-level photography of many addresses. But most Third World countries don't have this luxury because the number of computer-literate people is so small as to not make it worth the trouble for geographers to drive around getting the data.

(2) Shopping - With services like ShopLocal.com, I can find out what's on sale at every major American retailer within a 30 mile radius without having to go buy a newspaper. Again, this service is nonexistent in most countries.

(3) Variety of software - I went to an Office Depot recently in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I was shocked at the much smaller size of the software section, relative to the same section of a typical Office Depot store in the United States. This is probably even worse for language blocs that are smaller than Spanish (and Spanish is huge). I assume the reason for this discrepancy is that most countries don't have a big enough market to justify the cost of translating software from English into the local language. I also noticed that even though Windows and Office are available in Spanish, much of Microsoft's product line is not available in Spanish.

I think we should use concrete examples like this in the article (backed up by appropriate citations, of course) rather than speak in generalized abstractions. What does everyone else think? --Coolcaesar 01:18, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I quite agree. I don't have a plan of how to structure it, but adding an "examples" section would be a start. As it grows, it could be restructured as makes sense. Chitu 14:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Nice job, this article. I scrolled down thinking it would be the usual waffle that so fails to communicate the scale of the challenges - and found your Obstacles § and Concrete egs §. Well done. Am so flummoxed by not having to explain the basics that I can't think of anything to add. Again, nice one. JackyR 07:46, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe that this article needs to be cleaned up. I mean many of the 'concrete' examples are also found in poorer parts of Asia like internet cafes in the Philippines. In fact, Asia is leading in this category espescially in The IT Sector(India, Philippines) and online gaming(South Korea)

Um, "Asia" is quite large... Maybe there needs to be more on urban/rural divides, and centres with electricity/telecoms surrounded by large areas without. JackyR 16:23, 8 March 2006 (UTC)