Digital Divide
From The Big Picture Wiki
The Digital Divide Hasn’t Gone Away —Laura Dawson
I was having a conversation with a financial type, wearing my hat as a market analyst, and we were discussing the migration of textbooks from print to ebook format.
I was really touched when he brought this up: “What about students who can’t afford their own computers?” This guy – young, smart, obviously being compensated very well – was concerned about the kids who might not have access to electronic resources.
Being in Brooklyn, I think a lot about this issue, actually. My kids go to public schools – very good schools, made better by heavy parent involvement and donations, to the point where they are real estate magnets. But there is actually a pretty wide economic variation at these schools. Not every family owns a brownstone. Some live on the edges of the neighborhood, crammed into smaller apartments. Some go to the school illegally – using the address of a friend or relative in a better, less affordable part of the neighborhood. Some get a precious “variance”, allowing them to come in from another part of the borough.
And of course not all of them can afford computers.
In elementary school, it’s not so much of an issue. But by the time a kid’s in middle school, assignments that require computer resources are pretty commonplace. My oldest daughter, who just graduated from 8th grade, spends much of her academic (and non-academic) life on the computer – doing research, chatting with friends about assignments, writing papers. One day I actually asked her, “What about the kids who don’t have computers? Do you know any?”
Turns out she does. And these kids apparently cobble together digital solutions that involve the school library, the public library, and their friends. So they have to factor in all that scrambling and lack of private space with every assignment they get. Because they are economically disadvantaged, they are disadvantaged in other ways as well – in terms of time spent, and in terms of the emotional cost (having people waiting impatiently for them to get off a public computer, the distraction of having a friend hanging over your shoulder as you type, the worry of not being able to get computer time and complete an assignment).
Which leads to lower grades, which leads to fewer educational opportunities, which leads to fewer job opportunities…and the economic vicious cycle continues.
This is just in one middle school in a relatively posh section of Brooklyn (Park Slope) – I think about rural areas where there’s not even any broadband connection, or families all over the country stricken with debt and unemployment and expensive medical issues.
Granted, computer costs are coming down – there’s one theory that posits if we just wait five years, everybody in America will be able to afford a computer. But then you’ve got ongoing cost issues like software (particularly for security), Internet connections, printer costs (toner and paper), and the expense of upgrading every few years. A computer can cost an initial outlay of $600 (for a basic machine and its printer), and then an additional outlay of upwards of $500/year (for broadband and the other costs). This may not sound like much to those of us who are comfortable, but...
Now obviously, it’s not the responsibility of textbook publishers to worry about whether or not their readers are going to get jobs ten years from now. And certainly textbook publishing is expensive enough, and publishers have their own economic concerns – how to survive in a world that’s increasingly digital, where print is becoming so expensive that in time it won’t even be a viable option? There will always be some collateral damage as a market shifts; there will always be some who cannot shift with it.
But as we talk excitedly about XML repositories and digital distribution, and as we set standards for implementing new technologies, it’d be good to remember the full economic picture and work on improving not just distribution, but access. It’s one thing to bring digital textbooks to market, but if you’re not reaching everybody you could reach, that’s a problem that ultimately affects a publisher’s bottom line.
