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Thursday Nov 23, 2006
The new digital divide
It's not often that a web page makes me laugh out loud. But this one did. Do you think they really meant it to look like that?
It's much rarer to come across truly un-usable sites these days, but a new report from usability guru Jacob Nielsen argues that major problems remain, creating a significant digital divide.
Traditionally the digital divide has been seen as economic – those who can't afford online access are unable to share the benefits enjoyed by those that can. But Nielsen argues that, in the developed world at least, this will soon not be a problem.
Dell's cheapest computer costs $379 (with a monitor) and is about 500 times as powerful as the Macintosh Plus I used to write my Ph.D. thesis. While it's true that a few people can't even afford $379, in another five years, computers will be one-fourth their current price. Would that all social problems would go away if we simply waited five years.
Usability is a more intractable problem, Nielsen says - especially for those who are old or have poor literacy skills – but this, too, is improving.
The biggest challenge, Nielsen insists, is what he calls the empowerment divide: "...even if computers and the Internet were extraordinarily easy to use, not everybody would make full use of the opportunities that such technology affords." And, he continues, it's a difficult problem to address.
The Internet can be an empowering tool that lets people find good deals, manage vendors, and control their finances and investments. But it can just as easily be an alienating environment where people are cheated. Members of the Internet elite don't realize the extent to which less-skilled users are left out of many of the advancements they cheer and enjoy.
Ultimately, I'm extremely optimistic about the economic divide, which is vanishing rapidly in industrialized countries. The usability divide will take longer to close, but at least we know how to handle it - it's simply a matter of deciding to do so. I'm very pessimistic about the empowerment divide, however, which I expect will only grow more severe in the future.
Posted by Tom Green ( 12:08 PM ) Link to this post Comments[2]