Sunday 13 March 2011

Internet consequences

http://www.johncorney.com/

Access to web pages seems natural and nothing extraordinary, a day a day tool that we use in order to search for information, to communicate or simply for entertainment, however this is not a reality for a high percentage of the global population, currently there are millions of people without Internet access because of their limited resources or because of the restrictions imposed by the governments of their countries.

On the one hand this Digital Divide leads to an enormous gap between devoloped and non-developed countries, which enlarges the differences between them and makes more difficult the progress of backward societies and the freedom of expression.

The power of the Internet has reached unsuspected limits getting even whole countries to mobilize, to fight for their rights against the totalitarian regimes that opress their lives. We find a great example of the power that Internet has in humanity in the recent riots that took place in Morocco, there citizens held demonstrations to overthrow Mubarak. The curious thing about this issue is that these marchs were organised through social networks, such as, Facebook and Twitter being these the tools used to call the revolutionary upheavals. The government´s reaction was inmediate cutting off access to these pages in an attepmt to curb uprisings, preventing the restof the world from knowing for sure what was really happening, contributing to the Digital Divide .

Lastly, on the other hand , given the evident existent difficulties that some countries have with Internet access it is also true that in the last decades this divide is narrowing as a consequence of globalisation. Nowadays we live in a connected society with the need to be connected, now time and space have another perspective.


3 comments:

  1. Will the Digital Divide a politician interest? Mmm, that sounds suspect... Good article!

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  2. Internet censorship in some countries is unbelievable. As we can see in Marta Vicente's blog, http://internetandmediamv.blogspot.com/, Cuba and China are on of the countries with more internet restriction due to the fact that they live under dictatorship. The main reason is to avoid uprisings and protests, and you show a clear example in this entry about the recent case of the Arab countries.
    However I agree with you, digital divide is constantly decreasing and I strongly believe with time it can disappear.

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  3. Brilliant article, I really like it! Keep writting like that!!

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