The Digital Divide is quite complicated to solve and I’m not sure if it will ever fully disappear. However, some possible solutions for accessibility and the proper use of technology could be fundraising or removing the chat and status features on websites such as Facebook. Fundraising is always an option because many wealthy people enjoy donating to impoverished countries and commercials are a good way to put the program into people’s minds. Removing chat and status features on Facebook may lessen the amount of wasted time that many people spend browsing the web; however, there are an immense number of websites that are solely instant messaging so the effective use segment of the Digital Divide is difficult to fix. Another option for removing the effective use gap could be to introduce courses about the proper use of technology either in high school, college, or both. These courses could also be provided for entire communities, if necessary. There could be other classes that educate people about how to basically use a computer; this particular course could be a pre-requisite for other technological classes that go into more in depth details about computers. I think that many people would love to take classes on technology and these courses could be cheap, so anyone has the ability to access the important information provided in them.
Some of the solutions that are already being implemented to help lessen the divide are coming from private institutions. These private groups are using programs such as One Laptop per Child to help decrease the Digital Divide (The Digital Divide: Issues and Possible Solutions). One Laptop per Child is a program from the One Laptop per Child Association in Miami (One Laptop per Child: Wikipedia). The program’s goal is to send technology to target schools in the lowest developed countries. These computers are helping the education system in many lower poverty schools. The countries that are included in this project are Rwanda, Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Peru, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan among quite a few others from the Americas and Asia. Peru has received the largest number of laptops by far: 870,000 computers were ordered for its target schools in December of 2010! It seems to me that this laptop program from the private Miami institution is helping some countries lessen the divide. Hopefully, One Laptop per Child can be broadened to more than just the seventeen countries that it currently support.
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The Digital Divide will not fully be resolved because there are many individuals in the world who will not take the time to take courses to try to learn about technology. These people either don’t own a computer, have someone else dealing with the computer aspects of their lives, or only use the programs and websites that require basic skills. Also, even if every target school in the developing countries were given computers, not every person in those countries is enrolled in school. This means that there would still be many people who would not be up-to-date with technology. The developing countries have too big of a population and are too far behind with technology to fully catch up with the more developed countries. For the illiterate and lower-literacy portion of the population, they probably do not have the means to go to school and learn to read or they do not see the need. They are currently living their lives adequately, or better, with their reading level and probably do not want to take time out of their already difficult lives to learn to read. Since this problem of Accessibility has progressed for so many years, the possible solutions that I suggested and the actual solutions being implemented will only reduce the Digital Divide, not entirely remove it from the world.
