Tag: netsquareduk

Bridging the digital divide is about strengthening human networks not internet access.

We can’t bridge the digital divide simply by providing internet access. Stepping across that divide comes when people use the internet to strengthen their social network and enrich their stock of social capital.

When web access is used as an alternative mechanism to passively consume media, adverts, opportunities to buy or even help from public services the power relationship stays essentially unchanged. Earlier today Jo Geary clearly made the point that the digital divide is not simply about acess to technology. Loads of people have access to the internet, but choose to use it rarely or not at all.

That’s what I’m thinking after a couple of hours at the Big Debate on Digital Utopia – Power and powerlessness here in brum. You can watch it here (bambuser provided by Mark Comerford) or read the live coverage here (liveblogged by Pete Ashton).

Chris Unitt blogged about this yesterday, saying that the web becomes attractive to people when we understand they need help reaching it which is pitched at their level.

To my mind the digital divide is much like the economic divide between work and worklessness. If someone has been out of work for a long time it may well be a question of getting them into the flow of new networks, connections that can give them the confidence and the information to find and keep a job.

To step higher up the work chain is again often connected to connections. Strengthening your network to gain greater access to ideas, intelligence, support and encouragement can make the critical difference between being led and becoming a leader. To do this people will often benefit from a mentor or a sponsor, someone in their existing network who’ll get them across the bossed and boss divide.

Also at the big debate was graduate apprentice who’s post neatly summarises some of the key points made during the discussion between: Joanna Geary – Digital Journalist, Birmingham Post; Chris Cooke from Unlimited Media; Anthony Rose – Head of Digital Media for the BBC and Dr Doug Williams – Project Director, BT. Alex Hughes knocked out some neat cartoons for us, whilst Jon Bounds illustrated how online social capital helps substitute for old power conventions rather neatly:

In the pre-internet age, the opinions of panellists, debaters,
those “selected” where the only ones heard and would be automatically
given credence, but now unless the reputation of the speaker precedes
them I can think of twenty people I regularly communicate online with
who would tear the discussion apart with wit and actual experience.It’s those voices that I want to hear and online is the only real way to get them all together.

I was pleased that the Birmingham Post, New Generation Arts Festival and the ICC had brought this group to Birmingham. What really worked for me though was the conversations afterwards, not least bumping into dave Harte in Brindley Place as I left the ICC. Dave blogged this morning about the real question not being today’s question of ‘Digital – More Power or Powerless’ but being Useful or Useless.

But if we are at the forefront then we need to listen to ourselves now
and again. At best we demonstrate the vibrancy of living in an exciting
city with lots to offer but at worst it descends into a curious
uncritical mush and represents our city as one with its head in the
sand – too excitable to see the wheat from the chaff or tell the good
times from the bad.

Time for proof then.

Fair Play – a brief review of this partly online consultation for young people.

I’ve just played the online consultation game from the Department of Children and Families. You can find it here www.dcsf.gov.uk/playspace. Sorry to the folk at the department if I’ve slightly skewed the result. I ticked the over 13 button (which is true) as were the rest of my answers.

I expected to be very dismissive of the game but I was instead interested. It was an intelligent way to use a simple game to narrow down who was sharing their opinions. Allowing choices of things to go on the playground as a reward was a good idea (I immediately chose the treehouse, tunnel and den – why wouldn’t you!). The main problem with the game as a tool for consultation is I have no real incentive to work my way through to the the end. However it might work as a social object – to encourage a group of people to talk about what they want from play areas. It is also only one game – so inevitably won’t be well enough targeted for different age groups.

There is a separate online questionnaire, which I imagine is where the department is really expecting to get useful data. This, and all the other information could do with being more smoothly integrated. At the moment the game has it’s own set of pages, the rest simply appears on the web in a way which suits the department internal bureaucracy rather than the user. The game ought to have it’s own site with all the other information radiating out from that. It also would work best as w widget or some sort of onlne object which can be integrated into other people’s sites, myspace pages etc. Then the audience can distribute the consultation.

Summary:

  • A good stab
  • Not in the slightest web 2.0
  • Would have benefited from being executed with more conviction.

Simon Berry’s Coca-Cola idea makes it onto the BBC iPM blog – interview here.

Remember this post earlier this week encouraging you lot to join Simon Berry in his campaign to get Coca Cola to start using it’s distribution network to save lives by transporting re-hydration tablets to remote areas of Africa. One in Five children in Africa die before they are 5 because of diarrheoa.

Simon tweeted that the BBC is interested in his idea and this is what the iPM blog makes of what he is doing:

Simon Berry and others on the blog have been keen for iPM to to hear more about his big idea.
For more than ten years, Simon worked all over the world as part of the
British aid effort. He thinks there is a simple way to help the one in five children in Africa who die from simple causes – usually diarrhoea. And the answer is Coca-Cola.
Not the product – but its distribution network. We’ve asked Coca-Cola
to debate, but in the meantime Eddie has been speaking to Simon about
him and his idea.

Listen to Simon’s interview here.

Coca Cola's Life saving compartment. An idea from Simon Berry Inspired by Annie Lennox

My friend Simon Berry is onto something. After listening to Annie Lennox on Desert Island Disc he blogged this:

By some miracle my PC and Radio Shark did record last Sunday’s
(11/5/08) Desert Island Discs. Unfortunately it’s a very poor recording
but this is what Annie Lennox said.

Just to put it into context, after talking about her passion for
AIDS campaigns in South Africa and the fact that she’s set up her own
campaign ‘Sing’. She then talked about that fact that she would have
shared, with her father, the sense of injustice in the World. Then she
said:

We can distribute Coca Cola all around the
World but we can’t seem to get medication to save a child from
something as simple as diarrhoea and I think that that is wrong. You
know, you have a choice you either get involved with an issue or you
walk away from it. I think it’s a human rights issue and I feel very
passionately about human rights.

Simon is a very practical man. Now he’s asking Coca-Cola to “use their distribution channels (which are amazing in
developing countries) to distribute rehydration salts. Maybe by
dedicating one compartment in every 10 crates as ‘the life saving’
compartment?”

If you think that makes sense you can lend weight to the argument by joining this facebook group.