Access To Technology
Access to technology refers to the ability of individuals or groups to use and benefit from technological resources such as computers, internet, and digital devices. It encompasses issues of affordability, availability, and digital literacy. Unequal access to technology can exacerbate social and economic disparities, while improving access can enhance opportunities for education, employment, and participation in the digital society.
5 Key excerpts on "Access To Technology"
eBook - ePub- Jan van Dijk(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...My definition of physical access is the opportunity to use digital media by obtaining them privately in homes or publicly in collective settings (schools, libraries, community centres, Internet cafés and other places). The first option is private ownership and the second is collective use. In the history of diffusion of digital media in society, physical access was at first largely collective, and this remains the case in developing countries. Today, however, there has been a shift from collective to individual adoption in the use of mobile computing with smartphones. This is also the case in developing countries, where mobile phones are increasingly displacing the need to go to a centre such as an Internet café. Currently, the collective setting needed for mobile computing is to be within reach of some kind of Wifi. However, powerful or advanced computers and broadband connections are still needed for work and education in collective settings and for leisure applications requiring a high capacity in private settings. The second concept, material access, is broader than physical access. It can be defined as all means needed to maintain the use of digital media over time, including subscriptions, peripheral equipment, electricity, software and print necessities (e.g. ink and paper). In an even broader definition, it also includes the expenses of elementary computer courses required to be able to use digital media, additional expenses which tend to increase over time as software changes and which may eventually exceed the cost of the devices and connections. The third, more limited concept is conditional access. Devices and connections are often not enough to acquire a particular service. Every Internet user is familiar with the numerous user names and passwords needed to get access to websites. Conditional access can be defined as the provisory entry to particular applications, programs or contents of computers and networks...
eBook - ePubSocial Work and Social Policy
Advancing the Principles of Economic and Social Justice
- Ira C. Colby, Catherine N. Dulmus, Karen M. Sowers(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
...With the increased use of digital technology, the world has become a smaller place, with fewer barriers to communication and greater access to everyone, wherever they are in the world, for whatever information they want to know. Geography is no longer a barrier to communication; people from all over the world can organize around issues of mutual interest and have access to information that is available to all: A revolution in technology has enabled any work that can be digitized to be performed virtually anywhere on the globe. Highly skilled employees in Bangalore, Beijing, and other distant places are able to communicate with colleagues in American companies just as if they were working down the hall. (Bok, 2006, pp. 4–5) Social justice takes on a new meaning when the common frame of reference is humankind, not just our own society. Will this globalization trend make the achievement of social justice more possible, or will it make for increased discrepancies and injustices? Societal Acceptance and Utilization of Technology With this diffusion of technology throughout the world has come the societal acceptance of technologies that enables more human behavior to be visible, albeit in digital form. Today, it is commonplace to see a video recording posted on YouTube or some other form of social media; the private space and time of the person is virtually lost in the 24/7 technology world. The search engine Google and its phenomenal growth exemplifies the worldwide acceptance and utilization of technology. It is reported that Google is now processing more than 1 billion searches per day, up from 200 million just two years ago. Who are the people asking these questions? What are they using this information for? Tracking Google searches has become a new way to gain insight into cultures and societies. Google Correlate, for example, correlates searches with each other. This unique innovation started in 2008 with the growing flu pandemic...
eBook - ePubLiteracy in a Digital World
Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information
- Kathleen Tyner(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Although the ratio of computers to users is rapidly shrinking, it is clear that relative income is an important factor in decisions about who has access to information technologies and who does not. REFRAMING THE ACCESS ISSUE Without losing sight of the need to equalize educational opportunity, the discussion of technology’s place in education must proceed beyond the access issue. As the convergence of digital media promises hundreds of channels, delivering a torrent of digital and broadcast information, questions of who has access to what information become acute. The rush to define policies to ensure equal access to information has obscured other critical facets of both school reform and equal opportunity. In addition to the question of what people will do with more information once they receive it, it also useful to ask: Will citizens have ample opportunity to become skilled information providers as well as information receivers? Although the focus on access to tools is not antithetical to electronic literacy and learning, it is certainly a narrow approach that makes it more difficult to include the more cognitive and less skill-based analysis of media systems and information texts. Tool-based literacies make it easier to access a range of information resources, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that new tools are delivering the same old content. It is impossible to pretend that digital channels of communication are invisible conduits for information, free of the messy ideological questions about form and content that plague alphabetic literacy. Furthermore, it is questionable that educators are making use of the technologies already available to them, to foster literacy in a critical way. A broader concept of “technology infrastructure” beyond hardware and software is one step beyond access...
eBook - ePub- Clotilde Coron, Patrick Gibert(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Wiley-ISTE(Publisher)
...The first step allowed us to understand the variety of points of view on the link between technology and social issues. We have focused on the anthropotechnical perspective that we favor because of its ability to overcome all determinism and open up to action. In a second step, we proposed a brief history of technological change to illustrate the intertwining of technical and social factors, recognizing with Robert Cresswell (1996) that it is impossible to separate technical facts from social facts. We will continue by highlighting some of the most significant societal, organizational and individual elements. 1 We use “anthropotechnical” rather than “socio-technical” to distinguish from “socio-technical” history, born in the 1950s, marked by the industrial universe and the postulate of a separation between the technical system and the social system....
eBook - ePubInformation Services and Digital Literacy
In Search of the Boundaries of Knowing
- Isto Huvila(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Chandos Publishing(Publisher)
...Both old and new ICTs give us opportunities and constrain our possibilities to be informed, to know and to act. The complexity of the relation of knowing and technology is that their relationship is far from being given. Computer networks and the Internet are not only technical communication infrastructures. They have had a central role in reconfiguring the experience of access and distances around the world. Personal computing is similarly a question of a profound personalisation of the digital environment. Usability and convergence have become cultural expectations beyond their original scope of technological devices and digital media. Even if a central message of the prevailing techno-discourse is that of a libertarian empowerment and glorification of speed, technologies have simultaneously raised new boundaries that confine our opportunities for seeking information and knowing. A technology per se may be neutral, but the instrumental acts of bringing forth and using technologies make them active agents within the context of their emergence and exploitation. Expectations of the emerging capabilities of technology frame our outlook and the horizon within which we act beyond the context of the technology itself. Even if Douglas Rushkoff (2010) makes a relevant suggestion by urging us to take responsibility, to program instead of letting ourselves be programmed, we do not have boundless capabilities to do so. As Sherry Turkle (2005: 159) argued, technologies such as computers function in a dual role as machines and tools in the Marxist sense. As machines they constrain us and as tools they provide us with capabilities to act. Tendencies such as networking, personalisation, usability and convergence begin to live a life of their own and erect boundaries when they become measures in their own right. A network has become a boundary that is difficult to cross. Everything outside the network ceases to exist...
