Blog #2: Warschauer, and somebody else

The digital divide is the gap separating those who have access to and know how to use technology and those who don’t. As technology grows and advances at an exponential rate, so does this divide. Obviously there are countries and regions all over the world that have little to no access to the internet or computers or anything of that sort, some of them decades behind us in technology. However, this isn’t just a problem in other countries; we face the same problem here in America. There are still many people here who don’t have computers and wouldn’t even know how to use one if they did. As Warschauer points out, it isn’t just the lack of equipment that causes the divide, it is even more importantly the lack of knowledge. He says “…these same types of problems occur again and again in technology projects around the world, which too often focus on providing hardware and software and pay insufficient attention to the human and social systems that must also change for technology to make a difference.” (Warschauer 1). We can give people all the equipment we want, but if we don’t teach them how to use it it isn’t going to do them any good.

I think the author of the second reading, about the Mac user interface took it to a bit of an extreme. Yes, some of his points were valid, many of the icons and such on computers represent things typically found in offices, but the intent wasn’t to discriminate. I think the reasoning was just to make it easier to use and understand for what it was originally intended to be, an office tool! Most of the programs we use have icons that relate to something we might use in real life to do the same thing. The first thing that comes to mind is Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is designed with an artistic intent, therefore the icons are related to artistic tools. For example, you have the paintbrush tool which has an icon that looks like a paint brush, the paint bucket tool is a paint bucket, the slice tool looks like an x-acto knife, etc. Is Photoshop discriminating against say, car mechanics because it doesn’t use icons that look like wrenches and sockets? No, it is just using things that relate to items that you might use to alter a physical, paper copy photo, that’s all! Don’t make such a big deal out of it!

Warschauer, Mark. "Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide." First Monday 7.7 (2002): 1. Web. 1 Sep 2010. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/967/888.

Unknown, . "Mapping the Interface." Unknown. Unknown, 12 1994. Web. 1 Sep 2010. http://www.paulmuhlhauser.org/475/Readings/interface.pdf.