Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

July 13, 2007

Intel, OLPC Come to an Accord

The Associated Press is now reporting that Intel and MIT's One Laptop Per Child initiative have reached an accord. The two entities have been bashing each other in the press for some time now, dissing each other's technology like an east coast-west coast rap war. Now, the AP says that Intel will actually be joining the OLPC board and contribute funding to the development of its so-called $100 laptop.

More from the AP:

Under their new partnership, Intel and One Laptop Per Child might seek ways to package their computers together for overseas governments. For example, Intel's Classmate, which has to be plugged in, might be an option for urban settings, while the XO laptops, which use very little power and can be mechanically recharged by hand, could go into rural districts.

"There are an awful lot of educational scenarios between K and 12," said William Swope, Intel's director of corporate affairs. "We don't think all those are going to be served by any one form factor, by any one technology, by any one product."

Walter Bender, who oversees software and content for One Laptop Per Child, said the biggest benefit for his group would be Intel's work with the project on future technical developments. That will deepen the pool of software and hardware designers available to perfect the XO machines.

"It's a big problem, more than 15 people at OLPC can do all by themselves," Bender said. "Getting more talent lined up to help us is only a plus."

All I can say is this: Hallelujah.

For several years now, I've been screaming a particular mantra. When it comes to global development, different tools work best in different circumstances. There is no one single magic bullet, technological or otherwise, that will solve the ills of poverty, corruption or educational inequity. Sure, mobile phones have spread like wildfire throughout the developing world and are helping countries make important leaps. But that doesn't mean those countries shouldn't explore using telecentres or low-cost laptops for different situations. Try telling a small-business owner in Ghana that they can only use their mobile phone for all of their productivity needs. And sometimes technology isn't the answer at all, either - we shouldn't be afraid to admit that when that's the case.

Similarly, you can't expect a single branded device, even one created by entities as talented as Intel or MIT, to suit the needs of every development challenge in a particular country. Like the AP article notes, technological needs in an urban context differ from tech needs in a rural context. Classroom settings and business settings are different. The needs of an NGO working in a refugee camp are different from the needs of officials working in a governmental office headquarters.

With Intel and OLPC coming together and acknowledging that their devices will have pros and cons depending on the circumstance, countries that embrace their technologies will hopefully be able to make smarter, more strategic choices. Less time will be wasted in debating whether a government should by this tool or that one as the sole answer to all of their needs, simply because the person pitching the tool is well-resourced or charismatic. Imagine if we could get mobile phone manufacturers, Microsoft, free/open source advocates, etc., to adopt similar mindsets.

Different tools for different circumstances. Perhaps we're making some progress. -andy

Tags: $100 laptop | computers | development | digital divide | education | ICT4D | Intel | OLPC | One Laptop Per Child | poverty | technology

Posted by acarvin at 12:56 PM

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June 29, 2007

Democratic Presidential Candidates Discuss the Digital Divide

Watch the Video

Tags: Bill Richardson | Christopher Dodd | debates | Dennis Kucinich | digital divide | education technology | election 2008 | Mike Gravel | policy | politics

Posted by acarvin at 7:25 PM

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Asking the Candidates about the Digital Divide

While they didn't discuss the digital divide during the presidential debate as I had hoped, I managed to put some questions to four of the candidates in the spin room. Most of them didn't give me much more than a sound bite, but it was still interesting. Bill Richardson probably had the broadest perspective on the subject, while Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich focused on ubiquitous broadband and laptops for kids. Mike Gravel offered some terse comments on keeping the Internet free and putting computers in our classrooms.

I've posted an article about what they said on my PBS blog. I'll also put together a video of their comments soon. Hopefully, I'll be able to ask the Republican candidates about the digital divide at the next PBS debate, which will take place at the end of September. -andy

Tags: Bill Richardson | Christopher Dodd | Dennis Kucinich | digital divide | education technology | election 2008 | Mike Gravel | presidential debates

Posted by acarvin at 2:39 PM

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June 28, 2007

How Seriously Will Tonight's Presidential Debate Tackle the Digital Divide?

It's just past 9am and I'm finding myself checking my watch a lot, hoping the hours of the day will pass quickly so I can head over to Howard University for tonight's Democratic presidential debate. The event is being organized by PBS, and my colleagues there have been kind enough to extend me a press pass so I can blog (and maybe even vlog) the event. For the first time ever, the debate will feature a panel of moderators made up entirely of people of color, and it'll focus on domestic issues that are of particular concern to minority voters.

As you can see on the debate website, they've already broken down the themes of the debate into eight categories, including healthcare, criminal justice, immigration and affordable neighborhoods. But I must say I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that one of the eight themes will be the digital divide. By my count, it's been seven years since a national political forum set out to address the digital divide. As a nation we've become complacent regarding the issue, which is understandable since around three-quarters of US households have Internet access, while minority groups have made significant strides in catching up.

But complacency, as is often the case, doesn't change the fact that there are still challenges that must be met. Because so many people are online today, Internet access is taken to be a given, whether by government, businesses, schools, etc. If you need to access to some kind of government service, you're expected to go online. Students are assumed to have access when completing homework and other assignments. Job applicants are assumed to have access and the requisite tech skills to back it up. When you meet someone who isn't online, the first assumption is that it must be by there choice, rather than the possibility that they can't afford it or lack the skills to use it effectively.

Meanwhile, as I've been arguing for a very long time now, the digital divide isn't just about measuring who has access to the Internet and who doesn't. It's about who has access and the skills necessary to use these tools to improve quality of life for their families and communities. Included in this is the ability for people to become more civically engaged and have more of a voice within local and national decisionmaking. None of you need to hear me repeat the same lecture on how social media tools like blogging and YouTube are giving individual the power to participate in civic discourse in ways that were not previously possible. (Remember, Time Magazine gave us all that Person of the Year award.) Thankfully, research from groups like the Pew Internet Project is beginning to suggest that user-generated content is becoming more democratized. But the conventional wisdom would still suggest that Web 2.0 is largely a place for more affluent, better educated and generally white people.

We need to do a better job of bringing social media tools and skills to people that'll have been disenfranchised, just as we work on strategies to bridge the divide in the more traditional sense. It's a multi-stakeholder challenge, involving the private sector, local and national government, educational instutions, religious institutions and civil society. How will the candidates tackle these issues if they were to become president? So far I've heard close to nothing from any of them. I'm hoping that'll change tonight. -andy

Tags: civic engagement | debates | digital divide | Howard University | PBS | policy | politics | social media | Web 2.0

Posted by acarvin at 9:27 AM

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June 19, 2007

Ask a Technocrat

Later this week in Geneva, the International Telecommunications Union will be hosting a high-level UN conference on digital content delivery and the future of the Internet. Thomas Crampton of the International Herald Tribune will moderate a panel this Friday on the role international organizations should play in a world of converging media. His panel will feature leadership from entities such as WIPO, UNESCO, the ITU, the EU parliament and the European Broadcasting Union.

Thomas has put out a request for bloggers to submit questions for the panelists. If you'd like to offer your two cents, you can post your questions in the discussion thread on his blog.

Don't think you have any questions? Think a little harder. These folks are playing a major role in issues ranging from bridging the digital divide to who controls intellectual property on the Internet. I'm sure we can come up with some good questions, right? -andy

Tags: digital divide | Geneva | intellectual property | ITU | telecommunications policy | UN | UNESCO | WIPO

Posted by acarvin at 11:03 AM

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May 18, 2007

Andrew Rasiej Throws Down the Digital Divide Gauntlet to Presidential Candidates

Personal Democracy Forum co-founder and digital divide activist Andrew Rasiej made a passionate case to revive the digital divide as a major policy issue. He asked how many people in the audience felt the digital divide was still a problem, and few of us did. Andrew went on to talk about poor Internet access in low-income schools and communities, and how inequitable access is hampering civic participation and democracy.

Rasiej then announced that the Personal Democracy Forum will launch an online petition to elect "the first tech president." He's challenging the public to sign onto the petition and forward it to presidential candidates to get them to sign on to these basic principles:

• Declare the Net a public good. Bring broadband to everyone.
  
• Wireless public spectrum must be available and expanded.
  
• We need to support Net Neutrality.
  
• Go from No Child Left Behind to Every Child Connected
  
• We need to create a connected democracy, where people can actually hear public hearings and participate. We need to use this to create transparency and accountability.
  
• We need a national guard of technologists to work during Katrina-like emergencies.

I'll see if I can dig up more about the initiative. -andy

Tags: Andrew Rasiej | digital divide | election | No Child Left Behind

Posted by acarvin at 12:17 PM

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April 23, 2007

Time-Warner to Allow Fon Wifi Hotspots

Martin Varsavsky, founder of Fon

Jessica Mintz of the Associated Press is reporting today that Time Warner Cable has agreed to a partnership with the insurgent community wifi business Fon. Founded by serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, Fon offers wireless routers that anyone can use to set up a public wifi hotspot. When you get a Fon router, you set it up to allow your neighbors to piggyback on your wireless connection, either for free or a small fee - typically a couple dollars a day.

While Fon has been successful partnering with ISPs in Europe, they hadn't had any success penetrating the US market. (This didn't stop tens of thousands of Fon enthusiasts, or foneros, setting up their own Fon hotspots on the Q-T, though.) Now, Time-Warner cable customers will be allowed to use the technology and become purveyors of community wifi without having to violate their terms of service. The question still remains whether other ISPs will follow suit. Starbucks and T-Mobile, for example, have been somewhat dismissive of Fon, which caused the Spanish company to respond by giving away nearly 7,000 free Fon routers to people who live adjacent to Starbucks, allowing them to provide a competing service.

Last year I got a chance to meet Martin during a presentation he gave at Harvard. Here's a video of him discussing the idea behind Fon. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 8:56 AM

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February 5, 2007

Bush 2008 Budget Would Cut NTIA Funds in Half?

President Bush has just released his proposed fiscal 2008 budget, and I can just tell all of you are just drooling to get your hands on it. It's not exactly great bedtime reading - okay, maybe it is depending on your bedtime goals - but if you want to get a sense of the president's spending priorities, there's nothing like going straight to the horse's balance sheet.

From what's been published on the Whitehouse website so far, one thing stands out from my perspective as an observer of things technology-related. If you take a look at the section regarding the Department of Commerce, it's hard to find a mention of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). They're the folks that advise the president on telecom policy issues, from spectrum management to US competitiveness in the technology sector. The NTIA was also home to the Technology Opportunity Program (TOP), which awarded grants on digital divide initiatives, and they still manage the Public Telecommunications Facility Program (PTFP), which helps public broadcasting cover the cost of its infrastructure.

If you look at the budget text related to the Department of Commerce, the NTIA is only mentioned once, and it's in the section that lists the line items for each division of the department. In this document, NTIA would get only $19 million, down from the $40 million appropriated to it in FY 2006.

Since the year 2000, there's been a back-and-forth fight with Congress over NTIA's budget, as has been charted by the Federation of American Scientists:

Proposed by the Whitehouse in FY2000: $ 72.3 million
Appropriated by Congress: $ 52.9 million

Proposed by the Whitehouse in FY2001: $ 423.0 million
Appropriated by Congress: $100.4 million

Proposed by the Whitehouse in FY2002:$ 73.0 million
Appropriated by Congress: $ 73.0 million

Proposed by the Whitehouse in FY2003: $ 44.0 million
Appropriated by Congress: $ 73.6 million

Proposed by the Whitehouse in FY2004: $ 25.4 million
Appropriated by Congress: $ 51.1 million

Proposed by the Whitehouse in FY2005: $ 27.6 million
Appropriated by Congress: $ 38.7 million

Proposed by the Whitehouse in FY2006: $ 23.5 million
Appropriated by Congress: $40 million

Given all the flak the White House has gotten from critics about US telecom infrastructure and competitiveness slipping further and further behind much of the rest of the developed world, I was surprised by the line item drop for NTIA. In contrast, just two weeks ago, Sens. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Ted Stevens (R-AK) introduced a bill that would give the NTIA some direction on how to spend more than one billion dollars appropriated to them for emergency communications measures around the US. (Yes, the NTIA does that too.) Meanwhile, the White House offers the same agency $19 million.

Is there more money out there somewhere in another budget document that I'm missing? No doubt the new Congress will have some interesting opinions on the matter. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 3:26 PM

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January 10, 2007

Brits Propose Bridging Home-School Digital Divide

At the British Education Technology Show today, UK schools minister Jim Knight announced a new goverment goal of bringing Internet access to all students who don't already have it at home. Outlining a series of education technology initiatives, Knight stated he was launching a multi-stakeholder taskforce to develop a sustainable strategy for bridging this home-school digital divide.

Quoting from Knight's speech:

The so-called digital divide cannot be allowed to create and reinforce social and academic divisions.... With more than 800,000 children and young people still restricted to access at school, we run the risk that they could be isolated and left behind. There is no sense in asking every school to provide a learning platform to support children at home if some - likely to be the ones who might most benefit - are cut off from that platform.

Today, I not only want to reinforce that commitment, but to talk further about our aspiration for universal home access and how that might be made a reality. The way to achieve this is by thinking both innovatively and practically, and to use the wisdom of those who really know what they are talking about. That's why we are relying on industry to help with this - and many thanks to Intel, RM and Dell who already doing just that. We need to come up with a sustainable solution which will work for future generations as well as this one, building on existing good practice rather than looking for a quick fix....

I am setting up a Home Access Taskforce which I will personally chair. I want this to bring together key industry players, the voluntary sector, and education representatives to look at the issues. Because ICT at every child's fingertips is not the be-all and end-all of our ambitions. We need to make sure that schools and teachers can take full advantage, and parents too can play a significant role.

So classroom practice will have to adapt to the knowledge that children can access resources at home. It will also mean advice to parents so that they can help their children get the most out of their resources. Let's not forget that the extended family too will benefit....

To conclude, I am committed to ensuring that we will be far-sighted enough to shape the strategic context through policies that make sense for schools and the industry. That we will be proactive in seizing the opportunities technologies offers rather than being overwhelmed by the pace of change. That we will support our workforce to ensure that those opportunities are understood and accepted in the classroom. And most importantly, I am committed to ensuring that we get it right for all learners.

It's a bold idea, but so far is lacking much detail. For example, I can't tell if they're considering some sort of universal service fund akin to the US e-rate program, tax credits for low-income households or some other strategy. Either way, I'd love to be a fly on the wall of those taskforce meetings to see if they can work it out. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 2:53 PM

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January 3, 2007

A Little Methanol Goes a Long Way with Laptop Fuel Cell

Over the holidays, TopTechNews.com and MobileCrunch reported on a new fuel cell technology by Samsung that might have a direct impact on the digital divide.

Essentially, what they've done is created a docking station for their laptops that is powered by methanol, which is both cheap and easy to produce. (So easy, in fact, that people often die from methanol-tainted homebrew alcohol.) The docking station gives a laptop to stay charged 40 hours a week for four weeks. That's an astonishingly long time, given how my current laptop battery won't even let me get through a single DVD movie. They expect to ship the docking station before the end of the year. Meanwhile, they're also working on a pint-sized version, quite literally - a miniature power source that requires the equivalent of a coffee cup's worth of methanol to power a laptop for a week.

Most of the news coverage I've seen so far about fuel cells has been in relationship to cars and foreign oil dependency, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear about Samsung's announcement. There's no mention how much the fuel sells will cost, but if they can get the price point down, it'll be interesting to see how it penetrates developing nations and other places with large communities of people who don't have access to reliable energy sources. Methanol fuel cells would help people who are off the grid to power their digital tools more reliably, and this could impact the adoption of mobile and portable Internet devices.

Meanwhile, the only by-product of the fuel cell is water. Now if Samsung could ensure that this water is safe to drink, talk about killing two birds with one stone.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 12:51 PM

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October 17, 2006

Debate 2.0: Gubernatorial Blogging as an Exercise in E-Democracy

For the last week, there's been an extraordinary online exercise taking place in Minnesota. Actually, it's taking place in cyberspace - a 10-day gubernatorial e-debate in which the six leading candidates for governor are interacting on a group blog. Moderated by online democracy whiz Steve Clift in partnership with e-democracy.org and the Blandin Foundation, the e-debate takes advantage of a variety of Web 2.0 tools to give the public a whole new way of observing - and participating - in a political debate.

The debate began as a video blog, with each candidate posting a brief introduction on YouTube. These have been followed by a series of questions, answers and rebuttals on a wide range of topics, from the digital divide to healthcare to the national guard. Different questions request the candidates to respond in different formats. For example, a question on what the candidates would do to improve access to wifi and broadband would only allow a 70-word response, forcing the candidates to be succinct, while discussions on healthcare could be open-ended. Candidates could submit their responses by email or by voicemail, which would be transcribed by the debate organizers.

Meanwhile, the public can participate in a variety of ways. They can follow the debate on the website, as well as via rss and email. The responses include a rating system, allowing the public to grade them on a scale of one to five (the average rating seems to be around 2.5 at the moment.) All the candidates' responses can be reused according to a Creative Commons attribution license, meaning anyoen can do pretty much anything they want with it as long as they cite the e-debate website as its source.

For those people who wish to dive into the debate, Steve and his colleagues have set up multiple platforms for online interaction. You can join their bulletin board or e-list. You can upload your photos or video to Flickr.com YouTube respectively and tag them "mn06," which causes them to be displayed automatically in a photo gallery. If you have a microphone one you computer, you can record audio comments. And of course, they're aggregating blog post that mention the debate.

On the whole, I've been very impressed with the e-debate so far. The website is easy to use, allowing for various forms of multimedia while recognizing the importance of accessibility and low-bandwidth access. In some ways, though, the e-debate mimics the modern political debate a little too closely, with only limited direct interaction between the candidates. I would love to see more instances where candidates are responding directly to each other's posts rather than sticking to their pre-determined answers. I'd also love to see more of a public imprimatur on the individual questions, as in "Jenny Malcomsen of St. Paul asks, 'What would your administration do in regards to immigration reform," with their questions being presented in the media format of their choice. But these are small bones to pick in comparison to what's being accomplished.

Once again, Steve Clift is making the world safe for e-democracy - and every politician should take notice. -andy

Tags: digital divide | e-democracy | e-government | mobcasting | odeo | politics | tagging | video blogging | web 2.0 | youtube

Posted by acarvin at 9:54 AM

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October 13, 2006

Yunus and the Grameen Bank Win the Nobel Peace Prize

I couldn't believe my ears this morning. One of my heroes had just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Muhammad Yunus is the founder of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, a truly pioneering institution in the fight against rural poverty. As a young man in the early 1970s, Yunus spent time in the US on a Fullbright scholarship; when he returned home to Bangladesh, which was in the midst of a famine, he realized the current system of poverty alleviation simply wasn't working.

So Yunus created the Village (Grameen in Bangla) Bank. Rather than lending money to typical bank borrowers, Yunus decided that his loans would go to the poorest of the poor - farmers, village women, even beggars. The bank developed a system of offering microloans - loans often less than $100, the kind of amount that any other bank would never have bothered to award to its customers. In Bangladesh, though, a loan of $50 or $75 to a rural villager can mean the difference between abject poverty and ipermanently mproving the quality of life for their family. Microloans allow them to establish a kiosk selling dry goods, buy new farming implements, even pay for health insurance. They take the burden off extremely low-income households and give them a fighting chance to achieve prosperity.

Many bankers scoffed at the idea that a microloan program could ever work in a place as poor as Bangladesh. Surely, most borrowers would default on their loans and cause Grameen to go bankrupt. But Yunus proved them wrong. Of nearly $6 billion loaned over the last 30 years, an astounding 98.85% has been recovered.

The Grameen Bank has had a profound effect on the women of Bangladesh. Approximately 95% of the bank's borrowers are women - this, in a country where women historically had little to no economic independence. Because of Grameen, millions of Bangladeshi women have started their own businesses and prospered. One of their best known accomplishments is the digital divide initiative known as the Grameen Phone program. Women are given loans to start small telecom businesses in their home village. They receive a mobile phone and training, then make that phone available to villagers for community use. For villages with no other telecommunications link to the outside world, the Grameen Phone program has created new opportunities for local residents while helping women achieve improved socioeconomic status. It's proved so successful that Grameen is now replicating the initiative in Rwanda and other central African countries.

Perhaps what's most exciting about this Nobel selection is that the people of Bangladesh can rightfully claim that they as individuals have won a share of the Peace Prize. Approximately 94% of the bank is owned by its 6.6 million borrowers - the farmers, the women entrepreneurs, the beggars - while the remaining six percent is owned by the government of Bangladesh, which of course represents the people. No matter how you slice it, this years Peace Prize has been rewarded to the Bangladeshis themselves. Muhammad Yunus may be the one standing in Oslo this December - and rightfully so - but he will be standing on the shoulders of millions of Bangladeshi citizens, each of whom must be swelling with joy this day.

Learn more about the Grameen Bank, as told by Muhammad Yunus himself:

Full disclosure: some of you may remember that the Grameen Foundation funded my March 2005 trip to India's Baramati conference. One of the results of that trip was my Indian video blog, Baramati Bus Stop. If you haven't watched it before, take a look:

Posted by acarvin at 9:35 AM

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September 28, 2006

Digital Divide 101 With Amanda Congdon

If you've been reading my blog this week, you'll know that Amanda Congdon was in town on Monday, and we spent a few hours together talking Internet culture and hanging out with local video bloggers. Today she published a video of our time together, including me serving as a poor navigator through the District (shame on me) and chatting about the digital divide in the lawn of the Episcopal church across from my old apartment in Dupont Circle.

All in all, I think I managed to get by without making too much of an idiot of myself, but I definitely must get into the habit of tucking in my shirt before being filmed. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 5:37 PM

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September 27, 2006

New Email Scam Claims to Help Bridge the Digital Divide

Earlier today I received an email purporting to come from the "Bill Gates Foundation" (as opposed to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) saying that I'd just won 25,000 euros as part of a "lottery for Internet expansion in Africa." The email, composed in French, claims that that the so-called foundation had set up a lottery of "50,000,000 millions" euros - I'm not sure if that means 50 million or 50 trillion, though 50 trillion would certainly be more generous. For some reason, they claim that I'm getting a small chunk of this change, and somehow it'll help bridge the digital divide in Africa.

Unfortunately, they didn't transfer the money to my PayPal account. Instead, they said I needed to provide basic contact information, including my passport number and copies of any other pertinent ID card. Seems like a pretty good deal to me. ;-/

Here's the full text.

From: "BILL GATES FOUNDATION LOTTERY FOR INTERNET EXPANSION" To: andycarvin@yahoo.com Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 23:03:54 +0200 Subject: BILL GATES FOUNDATION LOTTERY

A votre aimable attention:
Nous avons le plaisir de vous annoncez que vous êtes l'un des heureux
gagnants de la :
BILL GATES FOUNDATION LOTTERY FOR INTERNET EXPANSION IN AFRICA,
dont le siège mondial pour l'Afrique se trouve à Paris.

Une loterie portant sur les adresses email des internautes africains.
La valeur totale en jeu est de 50.000 000 millions Euros et votre
adresse à été tiré au sort par sélection informatique lors de notre deuxième
tirage annuel effectué la semaine dernière au siège mondial sis à
Paris.
Vous faites donc partie des heureux gagnants et votre gain est de 250
000 Euros.

Pour entrer en possession de votre lot, veuillez adressez exclusivement
les informations suivant par email votre:
Nom:
Prénoms:
Adresse complète:
Numéro de téléphone:
Fax, email ainsi qu'une copie de votre carte nationale d'identité ou
passeport.
Après quoi il vous sera expliqué comment entrer en possession de votre
lot.
Recevez encore toutes nos félicitations

Isabelle Chevalier
Directrice des Opérations
BILL GATES FOUNDATION
12, Avenue Léonard de Vinci
92916 PARIS LA DEFENSE

Anyone else received this scam? I'm wondering if they're working their way through some digital divide-related mailing list. Either way, I've already forwarded a copy of it to the real Gates Foundation, in case they want to post something about it. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 11:27 AM

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September 8, 2006

Measuring The School-Home Digital Divide

The National Center for Education Statistics has just released a new report on the school-home digital divide. It's been a while since the US government has released a report about the digital divide, let alone use the term "digital divide," so it's interesting to see them paint such a stark picture of the technology gap that exists between well-to-do and underprivileged students. On the plus side, the research suggests that Internet access in school is indeed equitable, with little difference among students in terms of gender, race, disability. The same thing applies to the income and education levels of their parents - low-income children with poorly educated parents are just about as likely to use the Internet in school as high-income peers with well-educated parents.

Unfortunately, this equity vanishes the moment you leave the schoolhouse gate. I blogged about the statistics in detail over at PBS learning.now, so here are some of the highlights:

At home, 78% of white students have Internet access, which isn't enormously different than the percentage with access at school. In comparison, only 46% of African American students, 48% of Latinos and 43% of Native Americans had access at home; Asian-Americans and mixed ethnicity students fared better at 74% apiece. Regarding disability, 68% of non-disabled students and 55% of disabled students had home access.

Parental education and income levels also reveal a stark divide at home. While a whopping 88% kids whose parents achieved a graduate-level of education had home Net access, the same was true of only 55% of kids whose parents completed high school - and only 35% of kids whose parents didn't. If parents speak just Spanish at home, only 32% of kids had home Internet access, compared with 69% of kids whose parents spoke English. Lastly, 88% of kids whose parents earned more than $75,000 a year had home access, compared to just 37% of kids whose parents earned less than $20,000 a year.

I'm still struck by the fact that the report uses the term "digital divide" so freely - more than a dozen times in the whole report. By using phrases like "There is a ‘digital divide,'" the report seems to go against the last five years of federal government officials not using the term. Does it signal a sea change? My guess is probably not. Perhaps the Secretary of Education may pepper it into a speech but that'll probably be the end of it, unless the media and the blogosphere rally around the report's findings and make a big deal about it. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 12:15 PM

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July 10, 2006

Podcast: Angus King on the Maine Laptop Program

Last month while I was attending the AALF conference here in Boston I mentioned I'd recorded a podcast of Angus King, former governor of Maine, talking about the state's groundbreaking laptop initiative. I didn't want to post it without getting his permission, and earlier today I received an email from him giving me the thumbs up. So here's the podcast. It's about 50 minutes long and around 43 megabytes. As always, sorry about the audio quality but it gets a little crackly when I compress it. For those of you who would prefer a text version, here are my notes from his speech. -andy

Tags: Angus King | digital divide | education technology | laptops | Maine | policy | Seymour Papert | students

Posted by acarvin at 6:30 PM

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July 4, 2006

Digital Divide Network Reaches 10,000 User Accounts

Earlier today, the Digital Divide Network had its 10,000th user account created. The person in question, Katharina Reinecke of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, probably has no idea she helped us reach this milestone.

Technically, she is probably not the 10,000th _person_ to join DDN, because several DDN admins have multiple accounts. So the actual 10,000th person will probably be someone later today or tomorrow. Nonetheless, it's great to see DDN finally reaching this milestone after six and a half years. Special thanks to all of you in the network for making this milestone possible!

Posted by acarvin at 11:49 AM

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June 22, 2006

Angus King: A Brief History of Maine's Laptop Program

Here are my notes from former Maine Governor Angus King's AALF keynote about the Maine middle school laptop initiative. The notes aren't verbatim, but I tried to capture some of his more colorful and entertaining remarks word-for-word. I also hope to have a podcast online soon, but I'm waiting for the governor's permission to post it since I didn't get permission before recording it.

How did Maine's middle school laptop program happen? It started with a data point, three insights and a lunch.

The data point: Maine was stuck in 37th place for per-capita income. We hadn't been able to break out of this rut.

First insight: I don't know where the hell the economy is going. Tom Friedman talks about teaching Indians how to speak with a Minnesotan accent to provide better service at India's call centers. We don't know where the jobs are gonna come from or be like, but they'll probably involve two things: more education and technology. That's the only thing you can predict about the jobs of 20 years from now.

Insight number two: We're all chasing the same thing, we governors. We all want more jobs, better jobs. And everybody thinks they know the formula: cut taxes, encourage R&D, international trade, etc. But if we're all doing the same thing, how are we ever going to get out of 37th place? That was a scary insight, because I thought I was pretty good. We couldn't win that race. You don't get ahead of the competition by merely keeping up.

Insight number three: I realized that everything we did was incremental. Everything was baby steps. Like giving a teachers a half-percent raise. One year we paved 820 miles of road, compared to 780 miles the previous year, and we treat it like a major accomplishment. We act like these are big deals but they're just incremental.

The Lunch: with Seymour Papert of MIT. I said to him we have five kids for every computer. What if we could have three kids per computer? Seymour shook his head. What about two kids per computer? Wouldn't matter, Seymour said. Then he said, "It is only when it is one to one that the power occurs." But this was 1996 and we didn't have money to do this.

By 2000, our finance people said we'd have a $70 mil surplus in the state budget that no one anticipated. It hadn't been earmarked for anything. So I put these insights together and said I want to do something that helps people compete, isn't incremental, and should involve edtech. We could have used the money for anything, but I wanted to do this. My chief of staff said that we could create an endowment to give laptops to every 7th grader forever. And I said, wow.

We worked on this idea and announced it six weeks later. Other people plan projects like this for more than a year - that's better. But if we had waited, the legislature would have spent the money. If we didn't get our mitts on that money, it would get parceled out and been used incrementally.

A reporter then asked a question we hadn't thought of - will the kids or the schools own the laptops? I had no idea. I could have said I don't know, but I blurted out, "the kids." Wrong answer. Huge political mistake. People hated the idea that the govt would give these tools to kids. Seventh graders became the most hated minority in the state. So that was a big mistake. It was referred to as Governor King's Laptop Giveaway. Why don't more politicians try projects like this? It's because I got the shit kicked out of me. Ten to one of all emails were against it. "Governor, what were you smoking?" "Governor, we are a poor state, let someone else lead." Yes, and they will still lead. One guy even suggested it would be better to give kids chainsaws.

(The governor's Bill Gates joke. I was on the way to meet him the first time, and was talking with a trooper about what I should say to him. The trooper said, "How about, 'Dad, don't you recognize me?'")

So people hated the project, but I knew it was still the right thing to be doing. We had a two-prong strategy: deal with the legislature, and deal with the public. I had the legislators come in and see a mock classroom with laptop. Finally, one of my allies in the legislature - and as an independent, I don't have many - came down and said we're not going to be able to get this through. Instead we should put the money in a fund and create a taskforce. I said "sold" - because I knew that was the only way to keep the money. After a year of taskforcing, they came back with a recommendation - stick with one-to-one computing.

We then built whatever alliances we could. But people were against it simply because it was my idea. Welcome to the world of politics. Then I went on a teaching tour, to help people understand what we were talking about. We had a dog and pony show, working with Apple, handing out iBooks, then I'd come in and teach US history. And all the cameras would be rolling in the background. So I taught the Battle of Gettysburg and Pickett's Charge, using a website that had a collection of relevant sites and source materials, including the Gettysburg Address, in Lincoln's own handwriting. The depth of content blew away anything you could find in a textbook. Really deep stuff. I did this routine all over the state.

Then a crucial thing happened. I was talking with a business group, and they said, "Let's just do this in our own town of Guilford, and not wait for the government." So in this poor, rural town, we suddenly had a pilot project. Instead of arguing with people, I'd tell people to go to Guilford and watch how engaged the students are. And that probably sold it as much as anything else.

The legislature, meanwhile, insisted on funding more pilots. We'd still have only pilots today if we had stuck with that. I said we'd do it now, state wide, because of equity. This is an incredibly powerful tool for equity.

Then comes the Constitution - God bless the Constitution. In the end, they needed a budget, and guess who had to sign the budget? Me. I said, if you want to have a state budget, you know what had to be in it. It was simple as that. Pretty straightforward. You've got persuasion, but then you've got power.

Now the laptop program is finishing its fourth year. The endowment got spent in that time. It's hard to hold that money when you're also cutting Medicaid. But now it's being renewed for another four years, because it's proved itself. It's worked. The teachers, parents, students, convinced the legislature that it was successful and should be continued.

What did we learn? If you're thinking of doing something like this, go to one vendor. Don't spread it around - you want one throat to choke. When something goes wrong, you don't want the computer company blaming the network company. Get one vendor who can deal with the whole issue and be your partner. For us, Apple was a real partner. They moved people to Maine, were fantastic with repairs, a real partner.

Things also have to work. If you're gonna do this, the damn things have to work. If something doesn't work more than once or twice, the teachers will fold up the laptops and go back to the book. Reliability is a huge factor in this. A teacher just isn't going to put up with it otherwise.

Third - you can't spend too much time or money on professional development. The best thing we did was focus on professional development from the very beginning, starting with a grant from the Gates Foundation. This is not a hardware project. It's an educational project. This device is something that assists teachers, not replace them. So you need to help teachers integrate it into the curriculum. If all you're doing is buying hardware, it's going to be a failure, and I don't want that to happen because my name is associated with this kind of project.

Fourth - assessment. This obsession with testing is focused on rote knowledge. It's not capturing what these tools can really do. It's a tool that helps you solve problems, which is what life is all about. It's not for memorizing what year Columbus discover America. But the tests are testing that kind of knowledge. So do not - do not - promise your school board that one-to-one laptops will improve test scores, or you'll be out of a job. You can say they improve writing skills - all the research is showing this. But it's really about problem solving.

The model of education for 500 years has been a teacher becomes an expert and dumps data on kids. Thomas Jefferson could know everything, but now, no one can, because there is so much more knowledge out there today. We should look at law school as a model, because there's too much damn law. Nobody can learn all of it. Instead, you learn how to ask the right questions, identify the issues, and find the law. That's a much better model for kids to learn in a knowledge-rich society. It's a different kind of learning. Like they say, we've gone from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side. We're not going to beat the rest of the world on rote learning.

Innovation is the only thing America has. Natural resources and capital can go anywhere, technology can get zapped around the world. Innovation is something we have had historically - a confluence of experience, education and technology. Yet we as a country are frittering it away. Currently the federal govt has zero dollars budgeted for education technology. Zero. We're like England in 1900 - the most powerful country in the world, but for how much longer? We've had an incredible run for 60 years, but it's only going to continue if we're going to innovate.

My two favorite philosophers are Darwin and Gretsky. God said why, and Darwin said how. We all learned about survival of the fittest. I always used to think it was the ones with big claws who survived. But if that were true, the dinosaurs would be in charge. But the fittest are those who are most adaptable to change - and we're in a period of the most rapid change in human history. Those that change will survive. Resist and die. Then Wayne Gretsky - greatest scorer of all time, but he's not the biggest or fastest. How? "I skate to where the puck is going to be; everyone else skates to where it is." I don't think you have to be a genius to know where things are going to be in 10 years. It's going to involve technology, digital literacy - and that's where innovation will come. The next Bill Gates may be in a rural Maine town, but would have never had a chance if the state hadn't put a tool in his hands.

Final Thought: The Five Ps for Success:

Plan
Partnership
Perseverance
Persuasion
Passion

Those of you who are trying this, know that this is the right thing to do - but you've got to have these five Ps for it to work.

(Another gubenatorial joke: What's a Canadian? A Canadian is an unarmed north American with health insurance.)

"Oh, and come to Maine," he said while leaving the conference. "It's really nice this time of year. I used to get five percent of everything spent there." :-) -andy

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At the AALF Conference

I just arrived at the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation conference at Northeastern University in Boston, after spending the last 45 minutes wandering around like an idiot across campus, until I realized I was looking at the campus map upside down. (It's amazing how a lack of sleep can lead to a collapse of geographic literacy and spacial intelligence.) The conference is focusing on the role of ubiquitous Internet access and mobile computing devices in education. Former Maine governor Angus King will be speaking later today about Maine's middle school laptop program, while tomorrow we'll hear from Tim Magner of the US Department of Education and Mike Furdyk of TakingITGlobal. Should be an interesting conference. -andy

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June 1, 2006

New Report Says US Broadband Access is Up - and Online Creativity is Way Up

The latest broadband report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project offers some tantalizing evidence that certain aspects of the digital divide are finally being bridged. For many years, high-speed Internet access was the realm of the elite - generally made up of white, well-off, well-educated suburban families. According to the Pew report, which surveyed respondents during the first quarter of 2006, broadband access is rising across the board. And who's using broadband for online publishing? You might be surprised. I certainly was.

As of March 2006, 42% of all American adults - 84 million people - had a high-speed Internet connection at home, up from 30% the previous year. Amazingly, the 24 million new broadband users surpass the total number of broadband users that were online a scant four years ago.

Home broadband access, 2000-2006. Source: Pew Home Broadband Adoption 2006.

Whites continue to surpass African Americans on broadband access, with 42% of white households having access, compared to 31% of African Americans. At 41%, English-speaking Latinos have reached parity with white households, but the report does not account for the non-English speaking Latinos, who presumably go online much less. Income and education continue to be major barriers, though. While 68% of families earning more than $75,000 a year are online, only 21% of households making $30,000 or less had access. Similarly, (Interestingly, the strongest broadband growth rate occurred in middle-income households making $30,000-$50,000 a year.) 62% of households with someone completing a college degree had broadband, compared to only 17% of households in which no one achieved a high school diploma. So while progress is being made in terms of the racial digital divide, income and education remain enormous roadblocks.

Home broadband demographics. Source: Pew Home Broadband Adoption 2006.

My first reaction to this data was that the jump in broadband access is a direct result of telephone companies lowering the cost of DSL. Many DSL companies have started to offer introductory rates of $15 a month, less than half the typical rate. Indeed, the average cost of DSL in December 2005 was $32, down from $38 in February 2004. (Cable Internet access remained steady at $41.) So it would seem that cost must have been a major factor in getting new customers to switch. But according to the Pew report, this isn't the case. A whopping 57% of respondents cited speed as their primary reason for getting broadband, while only three percent said their reason was the cost of broadband lowering to an affordable level. This suggests that more people are willing to pay for broadband because of the quality of the speed. Perhaps the reasoning behind this is that so many websites now require broadband to function properly, they're egging households into upgrading their Internet access.

The Pew report also takes a look at how broadband households are using the Internet to publish online content. Overall, 35% of Internet users - 48 million people - have posted content to the Internet. Broadband users are more likely to post online content than dialup users - 42% versus 27%. This is especially true of bloggers and people who manage their own websites. While an average of eight percent of Internet users publish their own blog, 11% of broadband users had blogs, compared to only four percent of dialup users. Similarly, while an average of 15% of Internet users published websites, 17% of broadband users did this compared to only 11% of dialup users. (I wonder, though, how many of the respondents said they published a website rather than a blog because they didn't know the term "blog," since some online journaling tools that are essentially blogs don't use that terminology.)

User generated online content. Source: Pew Home Broadband Adoption 2006.

Demographics of online publishers. Source: Pew Home Broadband Adoption 2006.

Perhaps the most interesting finding of the report suggests that user-generate content is being democratized. Historically, online publishing was the purview of the elite. "Demographically, the broadband elite fits a classic early adopter profile for technology users - heavily male, well educated, and comfortable financially," says the report. But even this is beginning to change. More women are posting content online. Among broadband users, 39% of women post online content, compared to 43% of men. And income is becoming less of a factor as well. Among users earning $50,000 or less, 46% of them had published some sort of content online, compared to only 46% of those making more than $50,000. Of course, this doesn't mean that most online content is being made by lower-income users. There are many higher-income users online than low-income users; it's just that there's a higher percentage of online publishers within the lower-income demographic.

Pew then asked respondents if they had ever done any of these specific activities: shared something they created themselves like a story or a video, created their own webpage, worked on others' webpages, or created a blog. Not surprisingly, young people were much more likely to say yes. While 43% of respondents ages 18-29 said they had done one of these online publishing activities, only 29% of 50- to 64-year olds said yes, while just 18% of those 65 and older said yes. Meanwhile, race appeared to be a small factor, but in a rather counter-intuitive way: while 32 percent of whites said they had done one of these online publishing activities, 39% of African Americans and 42% of English-speaking Latinos had done so as well. So while whites may continue to use broadband in higher numbers, a higher percentage of African American and Latino broadband users are taking advantage of their access as content publishers. Similarly, income and education gaps are relatively minimal in terms of content production: 32% of users without a high school diploma versus 38% of those with a college degree, and 32% of users earning less than $30,000 a year versus 41% of those making $75,000 or more.

Does the Pew report suggest that the digital divide has been bridged? Hardly. The vast majority of low-income and low-skilled households lag behind, and gaps exist among racial groups, albeit less than before. But as we continue to work to give more people the skills and opportunities to go online, it would seem that more people of different racial, economic and educational backgrounds are taking advantage of those skills and opportunities to contribute online content. To me, this validates the whole notion of bridging the digital divide - democratizing cyberspace and giving people a voice.

It's not about access. It never was. It's about what people do with that access. And more people than ever are using that access to be creators of content, rather than mere consumers of it. -andy

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May 24, 2006

A Day of Out(r)age

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May 23, 2006

Public Media - An International Perspective

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May 22, 2006

This Wednesday: Day of (out)Rage

On Wednesday I'm planning to take part in the Day of (out)Rage, a day of national protest against the COPE Act. For those of you who haven't been following the debate on Capitol Hill, the COPE Act would allow telecom companies to ignore the basic Internet principle of network neutrality, letting them charge users more for complete access to the Internet, while peddling their own content instead. It would also take away local control of public access TV channels. And for those of you who are worried about the digital divide, the bill would let telecom companies conduct redlining, which is refusing to build out broadband access in low-income neighborhoods simply because the residents are poor.

In protest against this legislation, there will be protests in NYC, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. I'll be at the Boston rally, which starts at 1:30pm in Boston at the State House grand staircase. To learn more, visit saveaccess.org or listen to this podcast. -andy

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May 18, 2006

Public Media Podcast Part 1: Fred Johnson and Andy Carvin

Here's a podcast of the first part of yesterday's public media community meeting. It includes opening remarks by Fred Johnson and an international perspective on public media and the digital divide from me. Here's a link to text notes from the session as well. The podcast is in mp3 format; sorry about the static from the compression process. A Windows Media version can be found here:

http://www.andycarvin.com/podcasts/publicmedia1.wma

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Public Media: Apocalypse Soon?

Fred Johnson listens to Nettrice Gaskins as Danielle Martin liveblogs the event.

Last night I participated in a fascinating community meeting in Boston's Chinatown about the future of public media and its current threats in Congress. Organized by Fred Johnson of UMass/Boston and his Tactical Media Group, the panel included media advocate Alice Myatt, Dan Coughlin of Manhattan Neighborhood Networks and myself. I talked about public media and the digital divide at the international level, while Alice and Dan respectively addressed the issue from a national and local perspective.

Danielle Martin liveblogged the event, so I encourage you to read her detailed notes from the gathering. Meanwhile, I'm currently compressing the audio of the event into three separate podcasts that I'll post shortly. And word has it that video of the event will soon be available - I'll share that too when I get ahold of it. -andy

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May 12, 2006

Eszter Hargittai on What College Students Actually Do Online

Professor Eszter Hargittai of Northwestern University just gave a fascinating talk about her research on how college students use the Internet, the digital divide that exists in terms of how people use the Net, and its policy implications. Here are some notes. -andy

The digital divide: We need to move beyond the binary thinking of haves and have nots and start thinking about the second-level digital divide - differences between people who are online and how they're using the Internet.

Various factors influence IT use - socioeconomic status, equipment, autonomy, social support, level of experience. And skills play a major part in influencing how they use digital media. But how do all of these factors interrelate? What's the relationship between skills and socioeconomic status, for example?

She tries to focus her research on average users rather than niche groups. The average person comes up with things you'd never imagine as they try to figure out how to manouver online.

She collected data from 270 young adults in a fall 2004 phone survey. She found that people with higher education had higher levels of online skills. But what really mattered was whether or not they had autonomy in their use - could they use it at home on their own terms.

People in more privileged positions might be using the Internet in ways that really benefit them - this adds to the divide.

Now she's looking at college student use of the Internet, based on 1,300 students at University of Illinois/Chicago (UIC) between Feb and March 2006.

Demographics: 58 percent female, less than 50% white - very diverse.

Used the internet for six years on average, 12 hours a week, with 80%+ using it several times a day. Around 87.5% of their use is at home, with only 8.2 percent in a library or lab, and 1.7 percent at work.

When asked how often students visit blogs, 29.1 percent visit personal blogs of friends and family on a daily basis, with 60 percent doing it sometimes. Interestingly, the least likely category of blogs they access are political blogs, even though these are the blogs emphasized in mainstream media.

Types of sites used: facebook, flickr, google, craigslist, livejournal, blogger, delicious, dig, skype, youtube, myspace. Facebook was most popular - 78 percent - and 50 percent for myspace.

64 percent have ever visited the Chicago tribune, 62 percent BBC, druge 3 percent, instapundit 1 percent, daily kos 1 percent.

Most popular activities: getting info for school work, downloading/ listening to music; looking up a word or definition; finding a fact about something.

41 percent knew what an aggregator/newsreader was; 36 never read privacy statements.

User backgrounds and types of activities: there are statistically significant differences in behavior.

Groups that use the Web less frequently: Women, African Americans, Latinos, students with parents who have lower levels of education, people who don't access the net at home much, people who don't own laptops, people who know less about the Internet

Differences in skill, not just access, may contribute to digital inequality. Skill differences may result in differential web use, suggesting different opportunities. It's not enough to focus on technical access; training and support are absolutely necessary.

tag: beyondbroadcast

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Birds of a Feather Tonight on Journalism, Media Literacy & the Digital Divide

For those of you who are attending the Beyond Broadcasting conference, Shava Nerad and I will be co-hosting a birds-of-a-feather on journalism, media literacy and the digital divide. We want to discuss the spectrum of media criticism skills you need to participate as a content producer today, and the challenges faced when not all communities have equal access to these skills. To join us, please go to the conference wiki and add your name to the list of attendees for the BoF. We'll be meeting at Pho Pasteur in Cambridge (no, we're not buying, but we're good company). Hope you'll join us... -andy

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Public Broadcasters Need to Take the Digital Divide Seriously

Rebecca MacKinnon just asked the broadcasters panel at the Beyond Broadcast conference about their responsibility in bridging the digital divide. As broadcasters embrace the Internet and encourage the public to contribute their own content to public discourse, should they be concerned about the fact that the digital divide? If the elites in the community - ie, tech savvy Internet users - are the only ones that can participate in the new world of public media, is it truly public media?

David Liroff of WGBH and Bill Buzenberg of MPR both commented on the importance of having public broadcasters involved in public outreach to ensure that all people can have a voice in a community. Bill, however, questioned whether they should be the ones lobbying for greater Internet access for the poor. Isn't there a group better suited to be doing this?

Frankly, not really. We digital divide activists have been fighting what's generally a losing battle as far as policymaking is concerned. Very little attention is ever paid to the digital divide as far as the media is concerned, so there's little pressure for policymakers to deal with it. As public broadcasters embrace Web 2.0, it makes sense for them to engage the public and policymakers in a frank conversation about the digital divide, media literacy and what it means to be a 21st century citizen. Public broadcasting, at a fundamental level, exists to serve the public interest. Isn't bridging the digital divide in the public interest?

I'm thrilled to see people like Bill Buzenberg leading the way in demonstrating how the Internet can be used to get local citizens involved in shaping the way news stories get developed. It's an exciting time to be a Web-savvy public broadcaster, absolutely. But as I've said in the past, it ain't "We Media" unless it includes all of us. Part of the public debate must focus on what happens as disenfranchised populations with limited Internet access and IT skills fall further and further beyond. There is so much potential in utilizing the Internet to empower the voiceless. We need to talk more about municipal wifi and entrepreneurial efforts like Fon.com to get low-cost wireless into every community. We need to make sure that public media initiatives truly reflect the diversity of the community. We need to ensure that all people have equal opportunity to gain the skills to participate in public media. Otherwise, we're just taking the privileged upper middle class audience that has traditionally benefited from public broadcasting and giving them cool new tools to play with, leaving disenfranchised populations in the dust, wonder when they'll get their chance to speak.

tag: beyondbroadcast

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May 8, 2006

Scientific Publishers Leery of Cornyn-Lieberman Open Access Legislation

Last week, US Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) proposed the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (PDF), a groundbreaking bill that will shake the foundations of scientific research publishing. The bill proposes that scientific articles based on research funded by the federal government must be made freely available to the public over the Internet within six months of publishing. If enacted into law, the bill would force scientific publishers to release the full text of articles that would otherwise be accessible to libraries and professionals who pay hefty fees for access. All federal agencies that spend at least $100 million a year funding scientific research would require its grantees to participate in the program, hosting the research texts online in a "stable digital repository."

"Tax payer-funded research should be accessible to tax payers," said Sen. Lieberman in a statement. "Our bill will give researchers, medical professionals and patients in Connecticut and throughout the nation access to scientific discoveries and advancements that can help bring new treatments and cures to the public."

"Unfortunately, as it stands now, most Americans have little - to no - timely access to this wealth of information, despite the fact that their tax dollars paid for the research," said Sen. Cornyn in a speech on the Senate floor. "Our bill simply says to all researchers who seek government funding that we want the results of your work to be seen by the largest possible audience. It will ensure that U.S. taxpayers do not have to pay twice for the same research - once to conduct it, and a second time to read it."

Cornyn continued:

The Internet has dramatically altered how the world gathers and shares information. The Internet gives the homemaker in Houston the ability to find volumes of information about a recent medical diagnosis given to a family member. It allows a young community college student in rural West Texas -- a great distance from the nearest research library -- to learn the latest in scientific discovery and hopefully spur him to continue his studies.

While a comprehensive competitiveness agenda is still in the works, ensuring greater access to scientific information is one way we can help bolster interest in these important fields and move this issue forward while at the same time helping accelerate the pace of discovery and innovation. Through this legislation, I hope to ensure that students, researchers, and every American has access the published results of federally funded research, and I ask for my colleagues' support.

The bill would mark a sea change in the way scientific research is published. The majority of scientific publishers guard the copyright of their content very closely, often allowing only an abstract of the content to be made available for public consumption. For those people who wish to have the full text, they must either pay a small fortune in subscription fees or physically visit a research library that subscribes to the publication. With this bill, the text of these research journals would not be kept in a veritable lock box. It would guarantee that the public would be able to review the research for itself in a timely fashion, while still allowing publishers exclusive rights to the content for the first six months of publishing.

Not surprisingly, publishers are none too pleased. In today's New York Times, Howard H. Garrison of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology worried that the legislation could inflict serious economic damage on the publishing industry. "People won't be able to gauge how many people will be reading the articles and that has ramifications for advertising, promotion," he said. "Does it reach 1,000 scientists, 2,000 or 50? If the articles are on a government Web site, your readership may be halved."

Other publishers, such as Joann Boughman of the American Society of Human Genetics, take a different stance: that the public shouldn't necessarily be trusted to use this knowledge wisely. "Consumers themselves are saying, 'We have the right to know these things as quickly as we can.'" she told the Times. "That is not incorrect. However, wherever there is a benefit, there is a risk associated with it."

The sentiment of this statement is as old as the printing press, when church leaders feared that giving the general public direct access to the Bible would undermine their authority and lead to the corruption of religious practices. It takes the position that certain types of knowledge should only be in the hands of those who have the training, the money or the power to utilize it; otherwise, the public will be at "risk," as suggested by Ms. Boughman. But knowledge does not belong to one class of people. Open access publishing recognize everyone's right to access knowledge in a time and manner of their choosing, without mediation by those who wish to control that knowledge. It will allow people to make more informed judgments on medical treatment, and assist others in improving their understanding of important research that was previously available only to those who could afford access.

Meanwhile, the predictions that this law will undermine the publishing industry may be premature. There are already numerous open-access publishers experimenting with new economic models, such as the journals of Public Library of Science. The Internet has already forced the broadcast industry, the newspaper industry, the telephone industry, even the movie rental industry to rework their practices. Why shouldn't the scientific publishing industry be expected to do the same, particularly when the end result will inevitably serve the public good? -andy

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CORRECTION: Peter Suber of Open Access News has posted a clarification about what I wrote:

The bill applies to the peer-reviewed version of the author's manuscript, not to the published version, which may include extensive copy editing and mark-up. The bill's mandate applies to grantees or authors, not to publishers. Publishers are not forced to release anything, merely to coexist with free copies of different versions of a subset of the articles they publish.

This may seem like a fine point, but it has two important consequences. First, it's another reason to think that the policy will not, in fact, harm journal subscriptions. Researchers will still want access to the published versions and therefore libraries will still feel demand to subscribe. Second, it shows that the policy does not regulate publishers but only grantees, with whom the funding agencies have a contractual relationship. The FRPAA is too new for many publishers to have weighed in on yet. But in the debate over the NIH policy (different in many ways but similar in this respect), many publishers inaccurately claimed that it was an attempt to regulate publishing.

Thanks to Peter for setting the record straight. -andy

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May 5, 2006

Subbiah Arunachalam on India's Open Access Movement

Blogger Richard Poynder has a great interview with Digital Divide Network member Subbiah Arunachalam about the Open Access movement in India, specifically focusing on open access to scientific research. It's an important read for anyone interested in the future of open access journals like Public Library of Science, particularly in an Indian context. -andy

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May 3, 2006

Web Inventor Weighs in on Network Neutrality

Sir Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, has just posted a blog entry in which he pushes for policymakers to protect network neutrality and not allow the Internet to be parceled into balkanized fiefdoms where access to content is determined by the telecom carriers.

When, seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask anyone's permission. The new application rolled out over the existing Internet without modifying it. I tried then, and many people still work very hard still, to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal, neutral, platform. It must not discriminate against particular hardware, software, underlying network, language, culture, disability, or against particular types of data.

Anyone can build a new application on the Web, without asking me, or Vint Cerf, or their ISP, or their cable company, or their operating system provider, or their government, or their hardware vendor.

It is of the utmost importance that, if I connect to the Internet, and you connect to the Internet, that we can then run any Internet application we want, without discrimination as to who we are or what we are doing. We pay for connection to the Net as though it were a cloud which magically delivers our packets. We may pay for a higher or a lower quality of service. We may pay for a service which has the characteristics of being good for video, or quality audio. But we each pay to connect to the Net, but no one can pay for exclusive access to me....

...The Internet is increasingly becoming the dominant medium binding us. The neutral communications medium is essential to our society. It is the basis of a fair competitive market economy. It is the basis of democracy, by which a community should decide what to do. It is the basis of science, by which humankind should decide what is true.

Let us protect the neutrality of the net.

For more on this looming threat against the Internet, visit SaveTheInternet.com. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 10:24 AM

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May 2, 2006

Mapping Municipal Broadband in the US

C|Net's municipal broadband map

C|NET now has a map of municipal broadband projects in the US. The map lets you mouse over a state and find out what current and proposed muni broadband projects are going on, or click a set of boxes to highlight all states with specific broadband activities. It will also show you which states have laws limiting municipal broadband.

It's a nice basic overview of the state of municipal broadband here in the US. I just wish it had more detail, such as links to individual municipal initiatives and the legislation - now that'd be really useful.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 1:38 PM

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May 1, 2006

Quoted in the Austin American-Statesmen

The Austin American-Statesmen is running a story about the digital divide and featured a quote from me. The article discusses a world technology congress taking place in Austin, and contextualizes it by examining Internet access in a South African village.

Internet connections are virtually unheard of. In a place where many households run on about $160 a month with government support, the $650 a month Kgabo said the school needs to reconnect a reliable Internet link is hard to come by.

That lack of digital access "is representative of a much larger problem for a lot of countries where literacy is very low," said Andy Carvin, director of the Digital Divide Network, a global collection of activists and officials focused on extending access to technology.

"It's also very expensive," he said. "I have many African colleagues who spend hundreds of dollars a month to get access at home."

You can read the full article here -andy

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April 22, 2006

Coalition to Launch "Save the Internet" Campaign for Network Neutrality

This Monday, a coalition of Internet activists from across the political spectrum will officially launch the Save the Internet Campaign to fight telecom companies that are trying to create a multi-tiered Internet, where lower-income customers have less access to content and bandwidth than higher-paying customers. Quoting their new website:

Congress is pushing a law that would abandon Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment. Network neutrality prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work the best — based on who pays them the most. Your local library shouldn't have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to have its Web site open quickly on your computer.

Net Neutrality allows everyone to compete on a level playing field and is the reason that the Internet is a force for economic innovation, civic participation and free speech. If the public doesn't speak up now, Congress will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign by telephone and cable companies that want to decide what you do, where you go, and what you watch online.

This isn't just speculation — we've already seen what happens elsewhere when the Internet's gatekeepers get too much control. Last year, Canada's version of AT&T — Telus— blocked their Internet customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to workers with whom Telus was negotiating. And Shaw, a major Canadian cable TV company, charges an extra $10 a month to subscribers who dare to use a competing Internet telephone service.

Congress thinks they can sell out and the public will never know. The SavetheInternet.Com Coalition is proving them wrong.

Founding coalition members:

Professor Lawrence Lessig — Stanford
Professor Timothy Wu — Columbia
Free Press — Coalition Coordinator
Gun Owners of America
Craig Newmark — Craigslist.com Founder
Professor Glenn Reynolds — aka blogger Instapundit
MoveOn.org Civic Action
Consumers Union
American Library Association
Consumer Federation of America
Public Knowledge
Common Cause
U.S. PIRG
Center for Digital Democracy
Association of Research Libraries
The Service Roundtable — small business network
Afro-Netizen
Loyola University Chicago, Department of Communications
Educause
New Organizing Institute
Covenant College
Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project
Association for Community Networking
Amazing Kids
CCTV Center for Media and Democracy
Alliance for Community Media
Professor Susan Crawford
Center for Creative Voices in Media
Community Technology Centers
FreeNetworks.org
Media Access Project
Media Alliance
The Agonist
NYC Wireless
AcornActive Media Foundation
Californians Against Waste
Chicago Media Action
CUWiN
National Video Resources
Illinois Community Technology Coalition
Ohio Community Computing Network
Peacefire
Quicksilver Communications

To get involved, visit the website and let Congress know how you feel about the issue. -andy

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Network Neutrality: Perspectives from Developed and Developing Nations

Live from the Access to Knowledge (A2K) conference, Yale; Moderated by Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Speakers:

Susan Crawford, Cardozo Law Center
Michael Geist, University of Ottawa
Caio Pereira, FGV, Sao Paolo
Seán Ó Siochrú, Nexus/CRIS Campaign

Mike Godwin's intro:

To what extent is network neutrality a missing piece to the a2k discussion? Telecom policy often doesn't get talked about; instead it's IP discussions.

Technologies of freedom by Ithiel De Sola Pool predicted how computer networks would be central to freedom and democracy. In the US, you have freedom of speech and freedom of the press - the govt doesn't discriminate against content. There's also common carriage - the telecom carriers not discriminating against content. If Pool were still alive, I think he'd also identify a third principal - network neutrality.

Neutrality as to applications - allowing everyone, whether you're a company or an individual, to develop and run any type of application that leads to the creation and dissemination of knowledge. To do this, you need equal access to telecom infrastructure.

There's almost no distinction between the north and south regarding network neutrality - there's no settled paradigm yet. There is a debate going on, though not everyone's sure what they're debating about. The division is between those who want a simple, open, neutral network, and those who believe telecom providers need greater financial incentive to innovate, so they should be allowed to tier services and discriminate towards more profitable content.

Michael Geist:

Are all bits equal? Equal treatment of bits so that the market determines winners without limitation of access. Often called the end-to-end (e2e) principle. Non interference allows for innovation at the edges and mitigates the limited competition for consumer high speed access.

The two-tiered internet and VoIP. Shaw charging at $10 premium surcharge; videoton calls Skype a parasite; Madison River ordered by FCC to stop blocking competing VoIP services; Panama and Egypt blocking VoIP to maintain monopolies. (and others, too!)

Content blocked: Telus blocked Voices for Change website in July - it was a union site. Additional 600 sites blocked because they blocked the IP address hosting all of them; full communities lose access to sites. If you ask telco lawyers, no one new where the state of the law was, but Telus was entitled to take steps to block content. This has led to a major backlash.

Traffic shaping: Rogers Cable acknowledged that it prioritizes some content and applications over others; they get more bandwidth. Lower prioritization to file sharing, podcasting, video blogging.

Public vs. private internet: Verizon's FIOS service delivers high def tv plus web content for those people willing to pay. Everyone else gets slower public Internet. They have exclusive deals with companies like Disney and EA Sports. They're proud of these deals but they're open only to those who can afford to pay for them, creating a new digital divide.

Website premiums (access tiering). BellSouth speculates about charging sites to access their customers or prioritizing some sites over others. Verizon raises similar noise about two-tiered Internet.

Policy Questions:

- Legal protection from Internet tiering?
- Is tiering even needed for network buildout?
- Is this a north-south issue?

From a legal protection perspective, customer tiering exists today - dialup, broadband, wireless, etc. Access tiering raises serious competition and innovation issues.

Canadian telecom policy review panel:

Called for the right of Canadians to access content of their choice and online applications by means of all public telecommunications providers.

Incentives: there's lots of rhetoric, but little evidence that tiering needed for network builds. Technical costs may outweight benefits from some potential actions. Raises issue of municipal and public networks to ensure greater access and competition.

North v. South: Common issue. Developing countries may be impacted more, since VoIP offers tremendous opportunity there.

Susan Crawford:

This is almost like a religious conflict; two sides that barely even know how to communicate with each other without getting angry.

The Bellhead perspective: hardware and software are intertwined; network optimized for particular service; Internet is the last mile; carrier gets paid for the communications it carries; Internet doesn't work because there's no guarantee of service; services keep us safe - close relations with law enforcement.

The Nethead perspective: Network delivers packets; it's independent of applications. The best network is a dumb network, with endpoints doing all the work. Security becomes the responsibility of the users. The internet is all about standards and relationships.

The conflict between these philosophies is like the conflict between evolution and intelligent design. Totally different world views.

VoIP is now 3.5% of phone usage in the US, or nearly four million households, as of January 2006. The cost of phone service is going down to zero. Telcos become content providers to survive.

John Horrigan: 45 percent of Internet users say they use the Net to make major life decisions - illnesses, education, etc.

In the US, we have policy that is deeply political, deeply shortsighted, and driven by incumbents of various kinds.

BrandX - cable deregulated. DSL order - also deregulated.

Whitacre: How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them.... Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?"

Telcos say we need quality of service guarantees to fix a broken internet. We need to ID packets and monetize the last mile to recoup investment. No other network operates neutrally, so why should we? If it becomes a monopoly, deal with it then, but don't tell us in advance how to build our network. That's un-American.

What passes for broadband in the US is "the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed world," says Thomas Bleha in Foreign Affairs.

A developing nations issue. What do you do with an incumbent telco? Lay your own fiber, and work around the incumbent, like India's Andhra Pradesh or Amsterdam; try a microinvestment strategy.

What to do with bandwidth issues? She was told while visiting England: "Only sending email, so quality of service controls make sense for access to other applications." What are you going to do, prevent poor people from accessing movies?

The mobile Internet: the real opportunity. That's where we're gonna see enormous use; tiny screens will be where it takes place, not desktops.

Threats: Telecom policy becoming all communications policy; choice of viewpoint becomes critical; the ability to attach devices without permission, launch apps without permission, etc.

The Bellheads are seeking new laws, new asymmetry of information.

"This is an improper use of Internet technology."

Caio Pereira:

Net Neutrality from a Brazilian perspective, a middle-income developing country.

In developing countries, demand is lower, lots of concentration.

Consequences:

In an a2k framework, net neutrality should be a goal for developing countries. Tradeoffs should be taken seriously - they're often context specific. There needs to be transparency about bandwidth management in a context of scarcity, and detailed discussions about different types of discrimination and their impact on access to knowledge.

In Brazil:

Connectivity over the wires
- stagnation of fixed switched telephony - 40 mil lines
- slow growth of wired broadband access, concentrated in dsl rather than cable
Connectivity over the airwaves

The growth of fixed lines is stagnant, while mobile phones is up to 90 million lines - a major explosion

Around 3.5 mil cable subscribes - stagnant since 2000. But 90% of households have broadcast.

Around 3.5 mil broadband connections, mostly DSL.

Key networks to expand access: mobile networks, DTV transition. One key issue is net neutrality - walled gardens in mobile networks, while DTV is still strictly controlled by broadcasters. The political economy is behind access through these networks.

Seán Ó Siochrú on lowcost bandwidth for poor communities:

The principles underlying net neutrality are important, but they bare little relevance to the realities of developing countries.

We should talk either about net neutrality in rich countries or access to low-cost bandwidth in poor countries. But not both. The south is not on the same trajectory.

ICTs in poor countries: Specific form of liberalization has failed poor communities. Problems: vertically integrated operators; gsm and cdma are too expensive; weak regulatory rules; rural bandwidth mainly from VSAT; Africa pays twice as much for data flows (coming and going); fiber, where it exists, is underused.

International bandwidth. The sorry experience of the SAT3 trunk cable in West Africa. Owners are trying to protect their own interests, so there's been little impact on bandwidth costs. Some have switched back to VSAT because it's gotten so bad. Will the EASSy trunk cable be the same in east Africa? It's also owned by incumbent operators, so it might lead to the same failed outcome. But they're making lots of promises since they're now laying the cable, and APC and Infodev are pressuring them to make the cable open access - bandwidth made available to all at transparent, affordable prices - that it's a public good. The solution might be to get the world bank, EU and ADB to pay for the lot, in trust for countries. But probably no one will do it. It'll only cost them $200 million. But it's probably not politically feasible.

National backbones with a pro-poor open access approach. Open access as a solution - a potential to leverage public assets for open access. It needs strong, capable regulators, discriminating in favor of poor areas, supporting universal access funds.

At the local level, wireless IP technologies come of age, via low-cost multimedia ICTs as an alternative to switched voice and data communications. There's a potential for empowerment: scalable, easily built and maintained, used in public areas, based on a bottom-up logic of community owned, community driven networks. See http://www.propoor-ict.net.

Posted by acarvin at 1:04 PM

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April 21, 2006

John Howkins on the Creative Economy

The Creative Economy brings together the individual, their dreams, their sense of identity, etc, says John Howkins of the Adelphia Charter, and the economic system of transactions, and the rules of what's public and private, etc. This makes it an issue of the north as much as of the south. And it's more than a digital issue - some people talk about the digital divide but I talk about the creative divide. And it's more than about knowledge. For example, my company owns some of the Monty Python films. They're jokes, not knowledge.

Contract law is probably the most important laws we have regarding the creative economy. In my business, we live off contract law, and we rely on copyright when things go wrong.

The function of IP seems to be only justifiable in the sense that they support the creative economy and help people to express themselves and get rewarded for the work they do.

The cultural minister of hong kong talks about Asian interpretations of creativity. The views of the individual's relationship to the ideas they have, are similar to the notions behind free/open source, as well as creative commons. (He says the Chinese ambassador to the UK told him this.)

The Adelphia Charter. Intellectual property shouldn't be seen as an end in itself. We often limit ourselves to discussing IP in a vacuum, without seeing how it affects society, or how it affects the public interest. And the United Nations must be involved, along with the World Bank, the IMF and the regional banks.

The year 1710 was important to copyright because it's when the English parliament passed the first copyright law. A project launched a year ago wants to hold a conference in 2010 that wants to start with a clean slate and ask what type of IP law we'd have if we were starting from scratch.

Posted by acarvin at 10:55 PM

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Sisule Musungu on the A2K Movement

Notes from Sisule Musungu, South Centre

I want to focus on the origins of the international a2k movement in Geneva.

Wikipedia (at the moment): a draft treaty for a WIPO development agenda to encourage the transfer of technology to developing countries. Hopefully by the end of the session we'll have a better definition.

It's true that the intl movement is centered around the 2004 WIPO proposal (the Geneva declaration) to adopt a development agenda. But its origins predate that event. The proposal is to elaborate a treaty for access to knowledge and technology to ensure knowledge transfer to developing countries. It only focused on publicly funded research, though. And there were other a2k-related proposals relating to things like impact assessment.

http://www.cptech.org/a2k - url for the Geneva declaration

The Drahos proposal: a framework treaty forming principles as opposed to legal rules, since this is a very difficult, complex subject

Access to knowledge should be seen as an organization/advocacy tool.

It should be a political tool - govt to govt relations and institutional discussions such as WIPO

It should be an analytical framework susceptible to scientific inquiry - how do you measure a2k?

Some other potential frameworks: a human rights framework, development framework, a free culture framework and an economic framework.

Posted by acarvin at 10:53 PM

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Access to Knowledge as a Demand for Justice

Jack Balkin of Yale kicked of the Access to Knowledge (a2k) conference in New Haven today with a presentation about knowledge access as a demand for justice, development and liberty. Here are some notes from his session. These aren't exact quotes, as the man spoke as fast as Robin Williams on a coke binge.

note: a2k=access to knowledge; IP=intellectual property.

Access to knowledge is a demand of justice It's an access of econ development and human liberty/participation It's about more than intellectual property

A demand for justice:

Info is not just a thing in itself; it's a set of relationships between persons and groups. Some people control it; some people don't -and law helps regulate it. But not all citizens enjoy the benefits of the info economy.

Access to knowledge includes:

Human knowledge
Information (news, data, etc)
Knowledge embedded goods (drugs, electronic hardware, software, etc)
Tools for the production of knowledge embedded goods

The goals of a2k is to improve access to all four of these components of the knowledge economy. A2k is a question of distributional justice - within a society and between societies.

What does justice require?

If you can produce these components and spread them equitably, justice demands this.
If you can spur additional innovation in areas that current markets don't serve, justice demands this as well.

The right policies for knowledge production can increase the total production of knowledge and distribute it more equitably.

It's not just a tradeoff between equity and efficiency. It's not about how to divide the pie; it's making a bigger pie - and giving people the skills to make their own pies.

It's an issue of econ development, individual participation and human liberty.

The best information policies and knowledge policies lower barriers to access to knowledge. They help distribute knowledge more broadly and more effectively. A more balanced set of IP policies would distribute wealth more fairly and more successfully than a stratified IP policy.

It's a debate over information production being centralized and proprietary, or decentralized and participatory.

It's not about doing just one thing. You could just reform IP or promote literacy - or you could do both.

Using the rhetoric of human rights can be risky, though; some people argue that intellectual property is a human right. (A later speaker , Davinia Ovett, would say that the UN Declaration on Human Rights guarantees protection for *individual* people wanting to make a living by creating original works (art, writings, etc) but it doesn't apply to publishers.) A lot of good info policy comes from freeing up the private sector to innovate.

Is there a human right that the govt spends more money on IT research or network neutrality? Perhaps so, but it may be the wrong rhetoric for arguing it. Instead, it's an issue of justice, development and human participation

No matter how restrictive IP laws are, they may not be the biggest limiter of knowledge sharing. Bad telecom policy or censorship could be contributing to it. Or limited literacy.

A functioning public sphere, free press and govt transparency may be necessary to reduce govt corruption.

Universal telecom access, free computers, telecentres, libraries, etc may be some of the most important things a country can do to promote knowledge to a large portion of its population. All of these serve the goals of justice, development and human participation.

More notes from other speakers coming up... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 10:45 PM

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April 10, 2006

Speaking at the CISOA Conference Today

I'm going to be delivering the morning keynote at the CISOA conference in Monterey, California. You can preview it by checking out my Powerpoint presentation. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 10:46 AM

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April 5, 2006

Talking About My New Book at the Harvard Berkman Center

On Thursday, April 6, I'm going to be giving a preview of my new book, "From the Ground Up: Evolution of the Telecentre Movement," at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Every Thursday, a group of local bloggers get together to discuss Internet issues, and I'll be talking about the book for this week's meeting.

The book, edited by me and Mark Surman of Telecentre.org, explores the diversity of public computing initiatives around the world, examining the common visions and goals that unite them. It's intended to inspire technology activists to realize that they're part of a worldwide movement to bridge the digital divide, rather than working in isolation. The book will be distributed this spring by IDRC in Canada, but for now you can review a very large PDF version (It's around 10 megabytes - a necessary evil given the hundreds of photographs in the book.)

If you happen to be in the Boston area, please feel free to join us Thursday evening at Berkman. It'll take place at 7 PM at Baker House, 1587 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, north of Harvard Square. Hope to see some of you there!

Here are some screen shots of the book:

The book cover

Opening to the Hungary chapter

Opening to the USA chapter

Photo spread from the Ghana chapter

Page from the Chile chapter

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March 31, 2006

Talkr: Creating Audio Podcasts of Your Text Blog Entries

I've just started experimenting with a rather funky tool called Talkr. Essentially, Talkr is a podcast generator for text blogs, and it has enormous implications for people with visual impairments and limited literacy.

When you look at a typical blog, it's mostly text. This may be no problem for many people, but if you're reading skills aren't strong or you don't see well, text blogs can be quite a challenge. Meanwhile, thousands of Internet users create their own podcasts, which are basically blogs containing audio files. Apart from being really cool for everyone, podcasts are particularly useful for people who can't read or see well. But they're not exactly practical for the hard of hearing, either, who would benefit more from reading a text blog. Theoretically, it would be great if every person who wrote a text blog would record a podcast of it as well, but very few, if any bloggers bother to do this.

Enter Talkr. Talkr is a Web-based speech synthesizer that takes the texts of blogs and generates and MP3 file, with a computer voice speaking the text. For people who just want to visit their favorite text blogs and listens to them, Talkr works as blog management tool; you simply add your favorite blogs to your account, and it will create a computer-generated voice mp3 for each entry. Meanwhile, for all of you bloggers out there, Talkr lets you embed a computer-generatd mp3 into each of your blog entries, and supplies you with an RSS feed for them. This means that users can either come to your blog and click a link to listen to the mp3, or they can use iTunes or another podcast management tool to subscribe to the feed and receive each new mp3 file automatically.

Talkr is still a work in progress, but it's fascinated me to the point that I've decided to take a shot at integrating it into my blog. Each of my blog entries will now have a link at the bottom that says "Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article." Clickling the link will bring you to the mp3 file where you can hear the text being read aloud. (Note: I've noticed that the mp3 files don't work immediately when you've posted a new blog entry; it takes at least a few minutes to generate the file.) For example, here's the MP3 file that was generated by my last blog entry, about race and the digital divide.

Meanwhile, I've also added a new RSS feed that allows you to subscribe directly to the mp3 via iTunes or another podcast manager:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/carvin-audiotext

I will be very curious to hear what all of you think of this tool. The computer voice takes some getting used to - it's also a woman's voice, so don't expect to hear a radio-friendly baritone or anything like that. In practice, though, this tool could be used to help people who experience limited literacy skills or visual impairments, giving them a whole new way to participate in the blogosphere. Please let me know what you think. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 4:43 PM

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Race and the Digital Divide: A Current Snapshot

Today's New York Times features an article about the rapid pace of blacks and Latinos bridging the digital divide. The article paints a picture that minorities have made enormous progress in terms of gaining Internet access in recent years.

Studies and mounting anecdotal evidence now suggest that blacks, even some of those at the lower end of the economic scale, are making significant gains. As a result, organizations that serve African-Americans, as well as companies seeking their business, are increasingly turning to the Internet to reach out to them.

"What digital divide?" Magic Johnson, the basketball legend, asked rhetorically in an interview about his new Internet campaign deal with the Ford Motor Company's Lincoln Mercury division to use the Internet to promote cars to black prospective buyers.

The sharpest growth in Internet access and use is among young people. But blacks and other members of minorities of various ages are also merging onto the digital information highway as never before.

According to a Pew national survey of people 18 and older, completed in February, 74 percent of whites go online, 61 percent of African-Americans do and 80 percent of English-speaking Hispanic-Americans report using the Internet. The survey did not look at non-English-speaking Hispanics, who some experts believe are not gaining access to the Internet in large numbers.

The article goes on to note that the statistics shouldn't necessarily be taken as totally rosy, offering quotes from the president of the Kaiser Family Foundation and myself:

Vicky Rideout, vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which has studied Internet use by race, ethnicity and age, cautioned that a new dimension of the digital divide might be opening because groups that were newer to the Internet tended to use less-advanced hardware and had slower connection speeds.

"The type and meaningful quality of access is, in some ways, a more challenging divide that remains," Ms. Rideout said. "This has an impact on things like homework."

In addition, Internet access solely at institutions can put students at a disadvantage. Schools and other institutions seldom operate round the clock, seven days a week, which is especially an issue for students, said Andy Carvin, coordinator for the Digital Divide Network, an international group that seeks to close the gap.

As I note above, the article mentions recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project that suggests a surge of access, particularly by Latinos. According to their data, a whopping 79% of English-speaking Latinos access the Internet, beating out African Americans and whites - and perhaps even the Nordic countries, which generally have the highest Internet access rates in the world. However, it's worth noting that this 79% represents English-speaking Latinos only. According to the US Census Bureau, there are around 41.3 million Latinos in the US. Of these, nearly 14 million don't speak English well or at all. It's vital we collect better statistics about this community; otherwise, policymakers and philanthropists might hear a soundbyte that says four out of five Latinos are online and assume the problem is solved. Unless we address those who are most marginalized in our society - those that don't speak English - we're not tackling the problem adequately.

Moreover, it's worth noting that the Pew data looks broadly at Internet access, asking respondents if they use the Internet at all, whether at home, school, work or elsewhere. These numbers are generally higher than the numbers of people who have Internet access at home. The US Department of Commerce's NTIA office has collected digital divide data for over a decade. In their surveys, the most recent of which was almost three years ago, they researched the percentages of households that had Internet access. According to their data, white households were far and away more likely to be online than African Americans or Latinos. For much of the 1990s, Latinos fared better than African Americans, but that pattern appeared to reverse in the year 2000, when African Americans surpassed Latinos.

Why does any of this matter? As I suggested in the NY Times story, people may have Internet access, but if it's not at home, that access may be inadequate. Nearly 100% of US schools are online today, which would suggest that nearly all students would at some point or another have Internet access. But if some of them don't have access at home, they're at a severe disadvantaged when compared to their wired peers. Access through libraries and community technology centers are very important, but they don't solve all our problems, given the fact they tend to have limited operating hours and limited capacity. Some libraries are only open one or two days a week, and for a few hours at a time; imagine asking every kid in that community without home Internet access to complete an online course using such limited infrastructure.

So is it possible that nearly 80% of English-speaking Latinos are online? I have immense respect for the folks at Pew, and they don't have a political axe to grind, so I'm inclined to give them the benefit of a doubt. I'm still scratching my head a bit, but they're the statiticians and I'm not. However, it's still important to take into account the value of at-home Internet access, not to mention issues such as literacy, computer skills and the availability of high-quality, cuturally relevant content. Meanwhile, with each new technological leap, we're facing another digital divide, whether it's the broadband divide, the wifi divide, what have you. As long as there are socioeconomic divisions in our society, there will always be haves and have-nots - and the have-nots are the last to get the latest gear and benefit from it.

A note to Magic Johnson, in case he's reading this: You used to be an activist for bridging the digital divide, and now you're saying "What digital divide?" I'd be curious to know what changed your mind. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 3:16 PM

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March 29, 2006

What Does it Mean to be a Technology Activist?

Taran Rampersad has just authored an insightful essay on what it means to be a technology activist. (Yours truly gets a mention in the article, which was mighty nice of him.) I'm going to snip heavily from his essay, since he sums up his train of thought better than I can.

Really - what is a technology activist? This has been something I've been trying to figure out, as it is presently a primary description of me... I joked about it, saying that the 'pay sucks' (and it does), and that there's little room for advancement.

Andy Carvin is someone I would use the label on. So is Bonnie Bracey. In fact, when I think about it, the entire DigitalDivide.net is really about technology activism, and it's certainly not limited to that one group. There are technology activists everywhere.

And I still can't quite put a finger on what a technology activist is. At the end of the day, it's a very broad and ill defined area which is a bit scarey, because perception might lead people to believe that technology activism is limited to a select group, when in fact I believe it isn't. I believe that it's a part of the natural course of technology.

For my part, I see it as an issue related to quality of life. I know that a lot of other people feel the same, though most I do know of would be categorized as Digital Divide Activists. Which, of course, gets us to what a Digital Divide Activist is and may help define Technology Activism.

The Digital Divide is pretty hard to divide, by itself, but generally speaking I think we could say it has to do with Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), globalization, and a divide in technology usage which affects areas of development. Just like development itself, the definition of the Digital Divide changes every day.

I suppose that means that Digital Divide Activists are doing something. And in the broader context, technology activism isn't limited to Digital Divide Activism.

Taran goes on to say that technology activism in itself is "a pretty poorly defined area." Generally speaking, he concludes, it means "trying to bring about change with technology."

I think that hits the nail on the head. Being a technology activist and working to bridge the digital divide isn't about putting an Internet PC so we can grow the market for e-commerce, online gaming or entertainment. If that's all we're doing, I might as well start looking for another job. (Wait a sec - I'm doing that already. Scratch that.)

Instead, being a technology activist is something more basic: fostering equitable access to tools that will improve people's quality of life - quality as they define it, on their own terms. For some people, that means gaining access to education for the first time. For others, it's plugging them into the democratic process so they can become a voice for change. Still others, it's making sure that their children have more and better opportunities to prosper than they ever did.

At its root, it's not about the technology. Being a technology activist is being a community activist, a social justice activist, a political activist, an education activist, a development activist. We've got these amazing tools that are revolutionizing the way we all live, learn, earn and interact. Shouldn't everyone have the same opportunity to benefit from these tools, so they too can make a better life for themselves?

That's what it's all about. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 12:16 PM

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March 28, 2006

European Commission Report Urges Broadband for All

The European Commission has published a new report urging the equitable deployment of broadband Internet services across Europe. The report, available as a PDF document in English, French and German, examines the current state of broadband in Europe and offers policy recommendations for expanding access.

"Broadband internet connections are a prerequisite for e-business, growth and jobs throughout the economy. Competition and open markets are certainly the best drivers of broadband in the EU," said Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, in a statement released by the commission. "However, broadband connections must not be limited to the big cities. If the EU and its 25 Member States make a clever use of all policy instruments, broadband for all Europeans is certainly not out of reach by 2010. But the time to act is now."

According to the report, broadband has almost doubled in the past two years. "In October 2005 there were about 53 million connections in the EU25, corresponding to a penetration rate of 11.5% in terms of population and to roughly 20% of households," the report reads. "These developments have been mainly market driven and enhanced by increases in competition." Rural access continues to lag, with only eight percent of households subscribing to broadband.

Exploring the deployment of wireless access, the report states

The emergence of new wireless platforms particularly suited for rural areas is an interesting development. However, it requires that sufficient spectrum is made available, which in turn reinforces the importance of moving to more efficient and flexible forms of management of this scarce resource. The optimal mix of technologies depends on the characteristics of each particular location. The cost of technologies varies according to the number of potential users, the distance of the dwellings from the point of presence, and the presence of the backhaul. A scarcely-populated isolated area may be better off with a wireless solution and a small town with a wireline solution. Some radio solutions require a line-of-sight path which may not always be available in hilly regions.

No specific technology option will offer the best connectivity in all situations. The optimum is often achieved by a combination of technologies and solutions. In conclusion, best solutions can only be identified at the local level. Investment and choice should be made on the basis of current availability and effective demand.

Regarding the role of government in bridging the digital divide, the report continues:

Action at all government levels can help to increase coverage in under-served areas. Nevertheless, the assessment of market failures is a difficult task, particularly when there is uncertainty over the pace of broadband deployment. The benefits from government intervention must therefore be clear and substantial, compensating for the risks of undesirable consequences. One risk is that, by picking particular technologies or defining particular services, some government programmes may inhibit technological development. Another risk is that government intervention may distort competition and affect commercial incentives to invest. Finally, given the current gap between coverage and take-up, people may simply not be willing to use the technology.

All these risks should be assessed when designing broadband initiatives involving demand stimulation and aggregation, grant and loan programmes, municipal initiatives and competition, etc. The analysis requires policy makers to review reliable broadband data on an ongoing and timely basis. Availability of mapping of infrastructure is particularly relevant.

Local governments are well placed to collect local information and aggregate local demand for broadband services. They know the local topography and may determine the optimal technology mix. They may facilitate the development of local services or launch pilot projects to explore new technologies. They may support the rollout of future-proof high-capacity infrastructure that is open to competitive service providers on non-discriminatory basis.

In conclusion, local/regional authorities are best placed to plan a broadband project that takes into account local needs and technological requirements. National broadband strategies need to be strengthened to involve and reflect local needs. As projects are scattered, local and regional authorities will also largely benefit from an increased exchange of best practices.

Though the report focuses on infrastructure improvement, it does at least touch on broader aspects on the digital divide, including literacy, content and accessibility. "The geographical broadband digital divide is only one aspect of a wider social and economic development issue," they write. "It requires demand-side actions that support skills, accessibility, use of online services, etc."

For more info about the report, visit the Europa website. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 4:50 PM

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New Wikipedia Category: Digital Divide Activists

Taran Rampersad recently posted a message to his blog about the fact that he's recently been added to Wikipedia.

While reading the discussion on his Wikipedia entry's talk page, it occurred to me that there wasn't a category on Wikipedia for listing entries about digital divide activists. There are probably more digital divide activists in Wikipedia than I realize; just searching for a few Digital Divide Network members and other colleagues I found several including Bonnie Bracey, John "maddog" Hall, MS Swaminathan and Randal Pinkett. (I'm in Wikipedia as well.)

So, I went ahead and created a new Wikipedia page for digital divide activists.

This page is automatically updated whenever a wikipedia entry has a tag added to the bottom of the page designating that entry as a digital divide activist. For example, I was able to add Bonnie's name to the list by editing her wikipedia entry and adding this code at the bottom:

[[Category:Digital Divide activists|Bracey, Bonnie]]

As you can see, the format is fairly simple; you just edit the last section of it to include a person's surname, followed by their first name. So if you know of anyone who's a digital divide activist and happens to be listed in Wikipedia, please feel free to add this category tag to their wikipedia entry so they will be added to the digital divide activists page. And if you know a well-known activist who should be added to wikipedia, please feel free to create a new entry from scratch - the more the merrier.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 9:37 AM

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March 22, 2006

Research Study: Internet Access Spreads While Computing Power Gets Concentrated in Wealthy Countries

This week, the Seattle Times had an interesting article about a new study (pdf) on the international digital divide. The study, published by the World Information Access Project at the University of Washington, suggests that Internet access in general is spreading throughout much of the world, while computers and servers are being concentrated in wealthier countries. And the level of concentration has increased over the last 10 years, despite recent efforts to bridge the divide.

"That's pretty surprising, because we expected open markets to bring technology all around the world in an even way," noted Philip Howard, assistant professor of communications at UW.

From the article:

He directed a team of 30 students who analyzed 10 years of data from the World Bank and other sources to compile the World Information Access 2006 Report.

From 1995 to 2005, they found, the supply of computers, Internet hosts and secure servers became more narrowly distributed among a core group of countries.

Mobile phones and Internet access, by contrast, proliferated to become more evenly distributed around the world.

Perhaps the most telling part of the study is reflected in the cost of Internet access in different parts of the world. For example, I often hear people bragging about the proliferation of cybercafes in Africa and other parts of the developing world, pointing to this trend as a sign that the digital divide is narrowing. But when it comes to how much money the average person has to shell out for access, the study paints a worrisome picture. For example, while an hour of Internet access at a New York City cybercafe while cost the equivalent of six percent of a local patron's daily income, access in Lagos, Nigeria would cost the average user a whopping 75% of their daily income. "In the rich cities, an Internet user who spends $1 actually gets more out of their experience and finds more Web sites in their language," Howard said.

Percent of Average Daily Income Spent on One Hour of Commerical Internet Access, 2005. Source: World Information Access Project 2006 Report

The article continues:

While poorer countries tend to get computers much like hand-me-down clothing, cheaper mobile technology has spread relatively quickly.

"Most people around the world will experience new information technologies through their mobile-phone browsers," Howard said. "Computers are still priced out of reach for most people."

That leads Howard to question whether the right strategy is to build a $100 computer that links people in a network, as Massachusetts Institute of Technology is doing with its One Laptop per Child project, or a mobile phone that computes, as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has suggested.

The infrastructure and policies of the developing world seem better suited for mobile phones, Howard says.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but think I come down on the Microsoft camp," Howard said.

That is, with one caveat: He thinks the mobile devices should be based on the open-source software Linux.

While I agree with Howard that mobile phones will be medium that carries Internet access to many new users in the developing world, I'm frustrated by the article pushing the canard that bridging the digital divide is a matter of deciding between policies promoting mobile phone access OR policies promoting low-cost computers. In my mind at least, there is no technological silver bullet to the divide.

Different communities have differing development needs, depending on their circumstance. It doesn't make sense to promote a single tech solution as the One True Technology that will unite all people in a global development group hug. A Senegalese farmer ready to bring his crops to market would benefit from having a handheld device such as an Internet PDA or an Internet mobile phone in order to get the latest market prices, so he can determine how much produce to bring and where. (The Manobi Time to Market project in Senegal is already doing just that through mobile phones and SMS text messaging.) Meanwhile, a small business incubator in Zambia would benefit from providing young entrepreneurs with laptops, given the amount of spreadsheets, business proposals and marketing plans they'd each have to create as their businesses are nurtured. (Sure, you can do spreadsheets and Powerpoints on some mobile phones already, but have you ever tried ditching your computer for a week and using a phone for all of your productivity needs? Try it and let me know how it goes for you.) And in countless other communities, community radio still remains the best way to get information out quickly to a large audience.

The research conducted for this study will undoubtedly lead to many important debates about the progress we're making in bridging the global digital divide. I just worry that even more media outlets and policymakers will buy into this Spy vs. Spy-like technology debate, when there's simply no one device that will solve all the world's ills. The more tech options we have, the more potential solutions available for each development context... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 11:08 AM

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March 17, 2006

My Article in School Library Journal

School Library Journal has just published a feature story of mine in their latest issue. It's called The Gap, and it examines how the digital divide, as a policy issue, has fallen off the radar screens of politicians and the media, while marginalized communities continue to be left behind.

Some highlights from the article:

This year, 2006, marks the 10th anniversary of the advent of the digital divide—a major societal challenge that, sadly, has been pushed aside and forgotten in recent years.

Rewind to 1996: middle-class Americans were just beginning to explore the possibilities of the Internet as a tool for education, civic engagement, and entertainment. Yet less affluent citizens, lacking the necessary skills and exposure, did not enjoy the same access to these opportunities.

The so-called "Digital Divide" made prominent headlines that year when high-profile pundits, from President Bill Clinton to network news anchors, popularized the term in addressing the growing inequities that appeared to accompany the technological revolution. Today, however, you're not likely to hear much mention of the digital divide on the news or your favorite political blog. As with other political and social issues, conversation about the digital divide ebbs and flows—and for several years now we've been wallowing at a low watermark....

... Unfortunately, the digital divide is rarely addressed as a major policy issue in America. But as the U.S. struggles to improve its schools, while dragging its heels at improving our national broadband infrastructure, countries like India and China are churning out highly skilled young people for their workforces. At the same time, Nordic countries and Korea deploy ubiquitous Internet access. Other nations are creating government ministries to spur technological and educational innovation, while American digital divide policies have fallen off the docket. America is losing its competitiveness because we're not making the necessary investments in education and infrastructure.

Fortunately, there is still positive work being done. The federal e-rate program continues to enable low-income schools and libraries to connect to the Internet, while nonprofit and private sector entities invest in local and national efforts dedicated to bridging the gap. Meanwhile, copyright initiatives like Creative Commons ease the way for people to publish their own content for broad public use. And open courseware initiatives from universities, such as MIT, are making some of the most coveted curriculum freely available, whether you can afford to attend the brick-and-mortar institutions or not....

Here's a link to the full text of the article in case you're interested in reading it. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 3:55 PM

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March 14, 2006

Kenyan Parliament Website Launch Still Hamstrung by Reticent MPs

A couple of months ago I posted a blog entry regarding the shutdown of the Kenyan parliament website due to the fact that members of parliament were uncomfortable with their biographical information being available to the public. According to a new story on AllAfrica.com, the showdown continues.

Most parlimentary websites around the world generally include basic biographical information about their legislators, but in Kenya, many MPs were embarrassed by the fact that their official bios showed they'd only completed a limited amount of education. Their embarrassment led to a delay of the official launch of the parliamentary website. (The site was actually live at the time, but they removed all the content from the homepage so you couldn't poke around. Here's an inside link in case you want to poke around.)

Last fall, the clerk of the parliament tried to rectify the situation by requesting that all 220 MPs submit a bio that they would find acceptable for public scrutiny. "The biographical information is required as a matter of urgency," the clerk stressed in his letter. Despite the ample time provided to them, nearly one out of five MPs - 40 of them - still has yet to submit a biography. This has forced the parliament to delay the launch of the site yet again.

"We were ready to launch the website before the State opening, but our hands are now tired by the 40 MPs," parliamentary public relations officer Mike Ngwalla said. "This is a very sensitive issue and we do not want a repeat of last year's outcry which forced us to suspend the service." In the meantime, a visit to the parliament website continues to read, "Thank you for visiting the Parliament Website. We are currently updating this site. Please bookmark this site and visit us shortly."

The website's notion of "shortly" is quickly turning into a farce. While other East African nations have done relatively well at establishing an online presence for their parliaments, Kenya's parliamentary website continues to be stymied by politicians unwilling to share their professional qualifications publicly. Perhaps it is time to reactivate the website, with a note on the homepage listing the dozens of MPs who haven't complied with the information request. A little public shaming might go a long way in getting them to understand that being a public servant also means being public about their qualifications for office. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 1:26 PM

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March 8, 2006

New Website Explores Africa's Need for Internet Fiber

The Association for Progressive Communications has launched a new website to promote East Africa's dire need for an international submarine cable that could provide affordable broadband Internet access.

This web site, FibreForAfrica.net, has been put together to provide basic information about international Internet bandwidth in Africa, its costs and the existence of monopoly access to it. Bandwidth is the means through which Africa as a continent communicates with itself and the rest of the world. APC and the other orgs that have put the site together believe that the high costs of international bandwidth on the continent are an obstacle to the its social and economic development. APC writes in its press release:

Africa currently has to pay for some of the most expensive bandwidth in the world. The region currently only has one major international fibre cable (SAT3) that connects countries in West and Southern Africa but East Africa has no fibre connection. Fibre connections usually mean cheaper prices than satellite for volume traffic but because of the monopoly structure of the SAT3 consortium, its operators have kept prices high.

All this will change if the proposed East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) cable is built as it will connect countries on the eastern side of the continent and if this new capacity is offered in a way that maximises use and lowers price.

read more | digg story

Posted by acarvin at 4:01 PM

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Cape Town Libraries Now Connected to the Internet

This week, Cape Town became the first South African metropolis to offer free Internet access at all of its libraries. The public library access to the Internet is part of the Smart Cape Access Project begun more than three years ago. Quoting the article:

Congratulating the City of Cape Town, Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool said: "By taking the lead in this province and in the country, to improve access to ICT to all its citizens, the City of Cape Town has enabled access to government information, thereby ensuring all citizens form part of an all inclusive and development-oriented information society."

City of Cape Town deputy mayor Gawa Samuels said local government had responded to the challenge of making lives better by forming partnerships with the private sector and exposing residents to IT.

"Initiatives and innovations like this are helping our city and members of our communities to deal with the challenges of creating jobs and opportunities, reducing poverty, combating HIV/AIDS and getting access to social and community services," Samuels said.

read more | digg story

Posted by acarvin at 11:15 AM

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February 22, 2006

At the U of Missouri Scholarly Communications Conference

This morning I'm in Columbia, Missouri to speak at the Scholarly Communications Conference at the University of Missouri. I'll be giving a keynote entitled "Open Content vs. Closed Doors (Or Closed Minds?)." I'll post more about it later; in the meantime, here's the powerpoint.

Posted by acarvin at 9:00 AM

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February 10, 2006

Will a Medical Digital Divide Hasten the Extinction of the Neighborhood Medical Practice?

Today's Boston Globe has an interesting story about the large number of doctors who still can't afford to digitize their patients' medical records. This is creating a performance gap between digital and analog medical offices: computerized records allow doctors to monitor their patients' health and file their insurance claims more effectively.

Nationally, the state is in the vanguard of electronic medical record keeping -- not surprising given the high concentration of teaching hospitals and medical technology. But most of the computerization of records is being done by large physician organizations with more resources, creating a widening technology gap in the medical community.

Physicians who use computers can monitor patients' care more efficiently and reduce the possibility of medical errors. As a result, they consistently score better in quality surveys. Moreover, they earn 3 to 4 percent more money in ''pay-for-performance" contracts with health insurance companies.

According to the article, 20 to 25 percent of the 30,000 doctors in Massachusetts utilize electronic medical records or an electronic medication prescription system. Additionally, many of these digital offices are part of large academic medical networks, suggesting that smaller medical practices are even less likely to have an e-records system. And Massachusetts is ahead of the game - only 10 to 15 percent of doctors nationally use computerized record keeping.

It's more than just keeping lots of insurance paperwork in order; patient e-records contribute to more attentive and effective treatment.

The clinical benefits of computerized records are clear to advocates, especially when it comes to primary care. Not only do the systems automatically warn doctors about dangerous drug interactions or allergies, but physicians can review medical tests online, send out reminders to patients to get tests and checkups, and monitor the health of patients with similar diseases. The systems also allow them to better focus on patients who are the sickest and to control factors like diet, weight, and medications.

Unfortunately, doctors can't simply invest in a Dell laptop or a Mac Mini and call it a day - these e-record systems can cost tens of thousands of dollars. This makes it harder for smaller practices to remain independent. ''It's going to be very difficult for individual physicians to function as small independent practitioners in this environment," says Dr. James F.X. Kenealy, an ear, nose, and throat specialist in Framingham, west of Boston. ''You are going to see over time an amalgamation of individual physicians into groups."

In recent years we've already seen the Walmartification of the medical profession, in which large, monolithic medical networks replace the small, more intimate mom 'n pop practices. As it becomes clearer that expensive e-records systems are absolutely necessary for maintaining a strong, effective practice, will the individual family practitioner go the way of the dodo? -andy

Posted by acarvin at 9:38 AM

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February 7, 2006

A Quick Look at the Proposed 2007 Federal Budget and Its Impact on Things I Care About

For those of you looking for some not-so-light reading, the proposed 2007 US federal budget has been released. It's at least a gazillion pages long (but who's counting?) so I haven't had the time or inclination to peruse the whole thing, so instead I downloaded some key sections to see how the proposed budget impacts certain key programs. Being that this is my blog, I've decided to focus on some topics I care about, such as the digital divide, education technology, literacy and technology policy. I encourage you to download the budget and blog about things you care about; that way we can all do a Technorati search for "FY 2007 US budget" and see what everyone's talking about. (Oh yeah - you'd also have to include the phrase "FY 2007 US budget" in your blog entry for that to work.)

Anyway, let's take a look at some federal programs and see where things stand. This list is far from comprehensive, of course; it's just representative of some of the broad topics that relate to my role as a digital divide/edtech activist. -andy

Education Technology State Grants
This year: $279 million. Next year: Zippo.
At one time in history, the US Department of Education awarded millions of dollars in challenge grants for improving access to education technology in America's schools. The No Child Left Behind Act revamped the way this money got doled out, essentially giving it to states in the form of block grants. We've already seen this number drop from more than half a billion dollars in 2005 to less than 300 million this year, and now the White House wants to shut it altogether. Edtech advocates, quite understandably, are furious. "The elimination of this funding - which allows all children access to technology and the Internet, helps train teachers how to use and integrate technology into the curriculum, and provides funding and support for core-curricular content - runs completely counter to the goals and vision outline by the President," stated Sheryl Abshire in yesterday's press release from the Consortium for School Networking. "I urge the Administration to rethink this grave misstep on education technology funding."

21st Century Community Learning Centers
This year: $991 million. Next year: $981 million.
The purpose of this Department of Education program is "to provide expanded academic enrichment opportunities for children attending low performing schools." It's been touted by some as a community technology center initiative, but the main focus is on helping students prepare for NCLB-mandated standardized tests rather than technology education in general.

Assistive Technology
This year: $30 million. Next year: $22 million.
The US Department of Education provides this money to states as formula grants so that students with disabilities have access to assistive technologies. Without these technologies, students with disabilities are left at a severe disadvantage when compared to their non-disabled peers.

Vocational Education
This year: $1.3 billion. Next year: 800 million.
Half a billion bucks that were previously spent on vocational education are going the way of the dodo, including $105 million tech-prep education state grants, five million for tech prep demonstration funds and $23 million for incarcerated youth education.

Adult Education
This year: $579 million. Next year: $580 million.
Adult ed basically dodged a bullet, with more than half a billion going for state grants, and the National Institute of Literacy remaining steady at seven million.

Community Technology Centers
This year: Zilch. Next year: Bupkus.
Once a hallmark digital divide program of the Clinton Administration, the Bush White House killed it off last year. Why they bother to even list it in the budget even though it's been zeroed out two years in a row is beyond me. Twisting the knife, perhaps?

Literacy Through School Libraries
This year: $20 million. Next year: $20 million.
Funds support competitive grants to local educational agencies to provide students with increased access to up-to-date school library materials and certified professional library media specialists. Contrast this with....

Literacy Program for Youth Offenders
This year: $5 million. Next year: Nada.
Improving your literacy is okay if your library doesn't have prison guards, it would seem. Or another way to look at it: Teaching young prisoners to make license plates, apparently, is more important than teaching them to read them.

Civic Education
This year: $29 million. Next year: Nichevo.
Given all the terrible, complex things going on in the world, why bother to turn our children into civic worry-warts when we can pretend everything is hunky-dory?

Minority Science and Engineering Improvement
This year: Nine mil. Next year: Nine mil.
Not a huge program to begin with, but at least it didn't get asked to tip the axeman.

Telecommunication sciences Research
This year: $25 million. Next year: $8 million.
This money, managed by the NTIA at the US Department of Commerce, exists to support the "strategic goal of fostering science and technological leadership by protecting intellectual property, enhancing technical standards, and advancing measurement science." No wonder our broadband infrastructure is hardly the envy of the world anymore.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting
This year: $400 million. Next year: $346.5 million.
A constant target of conservatives, CPB is once again taking it on the chin, making it harder for small, rural public broadcasters to survive. To make matters worse, they're proposed zeroing out the $65 million allocation for helping PBS stations make the transition to digital television. As media advocate Timothy Karr writes, "These cuts would hobble NPR and PBS stations' ability to deliver the investigative reporting and in-depth news and information that's absent from the programming of their commercial counterparts."

Technology Opportunity Program
This year: gone. Next year: Still gone.
The TOP program was once the flagship digital divide program of the federal government. Despite its successes, it was seen as "Too Clinton/Gore" and was wiped off the map.

Low Income Scholarship Program
This year: $165 million. Next year: $75 million.
This National Science Foundation gives low-income students the opportunity to study science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) at the university level.

H-1B non-immigrant petitioner fee activities
This year: $190 million. Next year: $100 million.
H-1B visas allow foreigners with valuable skills to come to the US and work for companies or universities. Given how countries like China and India are churning out more highly-qualified science and technology professionals than the US is, the program helps increase the resident brain power at American universities. The NSF has funds to offset the costs of visa fees, but these funds are being cut almost in half.

Office of Cyberinfrastructure
This year: $127 million. Next year: $182 million.
Betcha didn't know that there was a federal office of cyberinfrastructure. There is, and it's at the NSF - and they're getting almost a 50% raise. The office "supports acquisitions, operations, and upgrades of cyberinfrastructure in support of the nation's science and engineering research and education community."

Posted by acarvin at 4:42 PM

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January 18, 2006

Kenya's Parliament Website: Too Embarassing for Public Consumption?

Internet users who happen upon the website of the Kenyan parliament will find a near-blank page with the terse message, "Thank you for visiting the Parliament Website. We are currently updating this site. Please bookmark this site and visit us shortly." One might assume the problem is a hacked database, or merely an attempt to roll out a new website. In fact, the problem is embarassment.

As reported by the East African Standard by way of AllAfrica.com, the Kenyan parliament website has been shuttered since September because parliamentarians were embarrassed about the information published about them. What content shamed them so? Apparently their education backgrounds, hobbies and ages, among other biographical trivia. According to the article, the site was shut down after complaints that this information was "too sensitive" for public consumption.

The article goes on to compare Kenya's closed door website policy with that of Tanzania and Uganda. Both countries embrace a more open approach to e-government:

They detail MPs' employment history, political experience and special skills. The sites also tabulate MPs' performance in Parliament in terms of questions raised and their contributions. The sites also contain a summary of development funds and ministry activities. Also posted on the sites are proceedings of committee meetings, which are still a closed-door affair in Kenya. The public is also given an opportunity to post comments on the websites.

The article stops short of criticizing the Kenyan parliament for its decision to shut the website. But it seems clear that the policy reflects a skittishness that borders on paranoid. While Uganda and Tanzania are now exploring e-goverment as tools for greater transparency and decreasing barriers between politicians and constituents, Kenya's parliamentarians remain fearful of acknowledging they're a few years older (or younger?) than they look, or they didn't study at Cambridge, or they like to spend their free time reading mystery novels. Such basic biographical information is standard on almost every politician's website. Even Turkmenistan's President for Life, head of one of the most secretive and repressive regimes in the world, details his background on official government websites. According to the Turkmen Embassy in Washington, Saparmurat Niyazov was born in 1940, was orphaned at a young age, obtained an engineering degree, has two children and enjoys poetry, history, philosophy and music.

It will be interesting to see what the restored Kenyan parliamentary website looks like. What kind of information will Kenyans be able to learn about their elected officials? Hopefully there will be more discussion about the issue in the Kenyan press and blogosphere; if politicians are too ashamed to acknowledge their backgrounds and qualifications, how can they be expected to engage in open, transparent policymaking?

Posted by acarvin at 10:29 AM

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January 5, 2006

Helping Latinos Bridge the Digital Divide Through Sensible Policymaking

Yesterday's Miami Herald featured an excellent op/ed by Hector Flores of the League of United Latin America Citizens offering a Latino policy perspective on the digital divide. "In 2006, Congress will set out to rewrite the nation's telecommunications laws," Flores notes. "And if federal lawmakers get it right, Hispanic Americans, and consumers generally, could have much to celebrate. But if lawmakers misfire, the digital divide could explode into a digital abyss."

Flores laments the state of telecom regulation, saying that current rules make it too hard for qualified companies to offer local telecom services and provide much-needed competition. "'Mother, may I' is truly bad policy in this technologically dynamic era," he says. Flores also suggests that companies seeking to compete in the voice-data realm should be required to contribute to the Universal Service Fund, the federal fund that makes the E-Rate program a reality, subsidizing Internet access for schools and libraries. Meanwhile, as companies move forward with deploying broadband and video services, they must address the growing content divide - a divide that's painfully clear to anyone who wants to go online but doesn't speak English.

"For Hispanics the stakes are especially significant because only one in eight are experiencing the digital fast lane known as broadband," Flores adds. "And study after study shows that broadband usage is a predictor of educational advancement and educational attainment."

"We all stand to benefit most from the innovative services and lower prices that competition will bring," he concludes. "Yet, we want the big telephone and cable companies to duke it out for our business -- for everyone's business. That is not too much to ask as the fastest growing demographic of Internet users."

It's heartening to see a prominent leader from the Latino community expressing concerns about the digital divide in a major media outlet. We've spent too much of the last five years retreating into our various communities of interest, spending less and less time working across ethnic, political and sector lines on crafting a common vision for bridging the divide. The Latino community, among other groups, is in an excellent position to mobilize faith-based organizations to get involved in digital divide policymaking. Years of experience have made it clear that no one sector - the private sector, government, civil society - can bridge the digital divide on their own. Just because all of middle class America is online doesn't mean we've bridged the digital divide. There's still lots of work to do, and I'm glad to see Mr. Flores and his colleagues at LULAC are taking up the challenge. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 3:12 PM

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December 17, 2005

Digital Divide Activist Randal Pinkett Becomes the Apprentice

Thursday night, millions of people watched the the live finale of Donald Trump's reality TV show, The Apprentice. The winner was none other than Randal Pinkett, the former Rhodes scholar, IT entrepreneur and digital divide activist. Randal's been active in CTCNet for a long time, so I usually get to see him each summer at the CTCNet conference. I can only imagine that the next time he attends he'll have more groupies than usual because of his newfound (and well-deserved) stardom.

There are few people in life I've met whose first impression made me think "natural born leader." Randal is one of them. I'm so happy to see he's captured the big prize on The Apprentice, but if you ask me, he didn't need it. Randal's passion on issues related to the digital divide and minority entrepreneurship in the IT sector is infectious and inspiring. Even without the notoriety, there's no doubt we'll see bigger and brighter things from him. Now we'll just have to share his leadership with the general public. :-)

Congratulations, Randal - you've done us proud.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 8:24 PM

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November 9, 2005

Mapping the Digital Divide on a Global Scale

Screen shot of Alcatel and Maplecroft's new digital acccess map.

Just in time for the World Summit on the Information Society, Alcatel and Maplecroft Consulting have announced the launch of an online tool for mapping the global digital divide.

According to Alcatel and Maplecroft,

Much of today's information is accessible on the Internet and other electronic forms through ICTs. For many people however, access to electronic information is difficult or even impossible - leaving them excluded from opportunities to access global markets and information resources. This lack of access creates what is commonly referred to as the 'digital divide'.

This 'divide' threatens economic growth and social development and mostly affects marginalized people with reduced access to ICTs due to a lack of capacity, finances or infrastructures. Overcoming this divide through digital inclusion is mostly about enabling social inclusion - using ICT as a vehicle to improve skills, enhance quality of life, drive education and promote economic wellbeing for all of society.

The website generates a map of the world, with each country color-coded based on its score in the ITU's Digital Access Index. The data is a couple of years old now, but at least it allows you to get a visual sense about the yawning gap between developed and developing countries.

As you explore the map, you'll find little symbols indicating specific remarks about what's going on in a particular country or region. You can also click onto a country and get a broader collection of development data and other local statistics. You can even explore other data sets related to political instability, landmines, the environment, corruption, and other important global indicators.

Occasionally the tool gets a little sticky - sometimes data boxes pop up on the screen and don't disappear - but otherwise it's a fascinating visualization of the digital divide. Too bad they didn't design it using Google Maps or another tool that would allow digital divide activists to add their own data to the map. Now that would have been really cool... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 2:16 PM

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November 7, 2005

Refugees: The Liberians of Buduburam

Video documentary of my July 2005 visit to the Liberian refugee camp in Buduburam, Ghana. I learn about the challenges faced by Liberians forced to flee their homeland, as well as some of the training programs available to them. I visit one of the camp's telecentres, as well as an women's literacy support group. Music used with permission of Alula Records. Nine minutes, 50 megabytes. Low-res version (20 megabytes): http://www.andycarvin.com/video/refugees-low.mov

Posted by acarvin at 1:16 PM

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October 23, 2005

Debating Development Statistics as Phones Ring Off the Hook

Right now, Shady Shadrach of One World South Asia is giving a blunt assessment of Bangladesh's progress in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Using data from the UN Development Program, he's describing the state of literacy, school enrollment, child mortality, and other factors. Very few of the statistics are particularly complimentary. Meanwhile, the chairman of the session, Dr. Quazi Mesbahuddin Ahmed of the Bangladesh Planning Commission, is clearly upset. In the middle of the presentation, Dr. Ahmed interrupted Shadrach, saying he disagreed with "most" of his data. Shady, meanwhile, replied that the data comes directly from the UN Development Program. Dr. Ahmed appeared to wish to challenge him further, but conference organizers encouraged him to wait and let Shady have his say first.

Shady's now giving an overview of India's Mission 2007 initiative, which hopes to create a knowledge center in every rural village by August 2007. Meanwhile, mobile phones continue to go off in the audience every few minutes, despite pleas from the organizers for people to shut them off. Seems like people are so proud of their ring tones they want to share them with all of us. It's beginning to give me a headache. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 5:51 AM

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My Job Is Done, But No Audio to Prove It

It's just before 4pm here in Dhaka, and we've wrapped up our panel session on content and the digital divide. Before coming to Dhaka, I bought a pack of AAA batteries in Dubai so that I would have plenty of power to record the session and post it as a podcast. Or, at least that's what I intended.

Unfortunately, the battery I put in my digital recorder was a runt. At some point during the panel session the battery died, and the recorder lost the entire presentation because of it. So alas, I have no podcast to share with you. At least I wrote some notes for my presentation, which I'll post below. -andy

Internet has fundamentally changed how content is produced

Previously required money, broadcast license, skills, POWER

Now any person with Internet access can blog, podcast, create online videos

20-30 million bloggers; more than half of them under age 20

Participatory media: Web 2.0, "We" Media

Digital Divide: Access, Basic Skills, Content.
You can't bridge the divide without bridging all three

Children's Partnership Four Content Obstacles to Bridging the Divide

- Literacy. Much of the content is produced for the educated. Literate. Producers rarely take into account the skill levels of the public.

- Language. As much as 2/3rds of Internet content in English. Producers must address local language needs.

- Localization. Lots of content created for national/intl audiences. The more local you get, the harder it is to have a critical mass of content producers. More content for New York or New Delhi than a village. The public must get involved.

- Culture. Content generally produced for educated, affluent audience, doesn't always address cultural diversity.

- Fifth: Accessibility. People with disabilities at a severe disadvantage accessing websites that are over-designed.

Professional, commercial content producers rarely address all of these challenges well. It makes it even more important for the general public to have the skills and access to become content producers in their own right.

USA and WSA

Global Schoolhouse Community Cyber Fair: student content

OurMedia.org: website that anyone can use for uploading infinite amounts of content

Enlace Quiche: Guatemalan Mayan project to produce local content by community members

Posted by acarvin at 5:42 AM | Comments (1)

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October 15, 2005

Requiem for C. Delores Tucker: Civil Rights Unplugged

In one of her last commentaries before her death at age 78 this week, civil rights activist C. Delores Tucker authored an essay about broadband "red-lining" - the practice of telecom companies purposely avoiding the deployment of high-speed Internet services in low-income, marginalized communities. She calls to task SBC and Verizon for their redlining practices, arguing that this intentional widening of the digital divide must be treated as civil rights issue. Here's a sample of what she wrote. -andy

Picture for a minute a major financial institution petitioning Congress for special rules to allow it to provide loans only in certain communities throughout the country. "The cities are off limits!" says this fictional creditor, "and the moderate, middle-income communities . . . forget about it! They're not high-end enough."

Were such a corporate actor to step into the political arena, civil rights and political leaders would be quick with their denunciations, attacking the proposal as the kind of odious bigotry seen in a bygone era. Yet this is exactly what the Bell telecommunications monopolies -- Verizon and SBC -- are proposing to Congress and to legislators in California, New Jersey and other places around the country. They are insisting that lawmakers bless their proposal to roll out new digital television and advanced broadband services only to the more affluent....

...The telephone companies' proposal is made precisely for the purpose of allowing them to invest less, and in fewer communities -- rather than more, as the current rules require. And as for their perennial promises of more investment in exchange for legislative favors: Legislators around the country have derided SBC and Verizon for never fulfilling such pledges.

Don't get me wrong. I support Verizon and SBC's entrance into the video services market, and I believe that consumers will benefit from it. But these potential benefits should not transform our elected officials into marionettes for two monopolies that want to trample our civil rights traditions.

Posted by acarvin at 9:29 AM

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October 6, 2005

Philly Wi-Fi Plan Moves Forward

An update from the Washington Post on Philadelphia's plan to embrace municipal wireless, which will charge around $20/month for subscribers and half that for low-income residents... -ac

Philadelphia yesterday announced a plan to build the biggest municipal wireless Internet system in the nation, the latest of a growing number of cities to treat high-speed Web access as a basic municipal service like water, electricity and trash collection. Philadelphia said Atlanta-based EarthLink Inc. will fund, build and manage the 135-square-mile network, which will offer low-income residents service for as little as about $10 a month and could threaten the profits of telephone and cable companies.

"Increasingly, city officials view broadband in the 21st century the same way they viewed electricity 100 years ago and telephone service 50 years ago. It's falling into the category of a necessary and essential social service," said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, a nonprofit group that favors the development of municipal wireless. "Cities see this as a way to spur economic growth: on the one hand to put tools in the hands of the underprivileged and give them a leg up, and on the other to provide incentives to small businesses to locate in these cities and to expand their operations," Scott said.

Posted by acarvin at 11:40 AM

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October 5, 2005

The Caboose of the Media Train

"Some of the biggest stories of this century are going to be produced by people in the caboose of media train."

-Farai Chideya, speaking about the importance of bridging the digital divide and teaching digital literacy as a way of ensuring that disenfranchised populations join the online conversation.

tag: We Media

Posted by acarvin at 9:45 AM

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September 1, 2005

Bringing Internet Access to Astrodome Refugees

Some good news from Will Reed of Technology For All in Houston:

Technology For All(TFA) is working with its community and corporate
partners to set up a Community Technology Center (CTC) at Houston's
Astrodome, which will soon be home for 25,000 evacuees from the New
Orleans Superdome.  We are pleased to have the opportunity to help in
this way and have made an initial commitment to install a 40 station
CTC. We expect we will need to expand that, but want to move quickly
with what we can do and then assess the additional need.

TFA also anticipates working with public leaders and officials to assist in the
deployment of a Wireless Mesh Network in the Astrodome. Those details
are under discussion. Pam Gardner (Pam.Gardner [at] techforall.org
713.454.6415) on our staff is coordinating volunteer efforts to set up
the CTC and then provide programming assistance. TFA will need
additional computers (Pentium 4 or faster), software, volunteers, $'s
and organizational capacity to pull this off. Thanks in advance for your
assistance. As more details are worked out we will pass them along.

William S. Reed
President/CEO
TECHNOLOGY FOR ALL(r)/Technology For All-Houston
2220 Broadway | Houston, TX 77012
Tel: 713.454.6400 | Direct: 713.454.6411 | Fax: 713.454.6454
website: http://www.techforall.org
 http://texasctcs.blogspot.com/ 
"We Empower Communities"

TFA's work at the Astrodome will mean thousands of Katrina refugees will be plugged in to the rest of the world again. This is wonderful news. If anyone can help them out with donations, as explained by Will, please contact them as soon as possible.

Posted by acarvin at 2:34 PM

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August 25, 2005

Africa's a Mobile Phone Oasis, But You Can't Live on Water Alone

There's a lengthy article in today's New York Times about the rapid pace of mobile phone adoption in Africa. Here's a sample:

From 1999 through 2004, the number of mobile subscribers in Africa jumped to 76.8 million, from 7.5 million, an average annual increase of 58 percent. South Africa, the continent's richest nation, accounted for one-fifth of that growth. Asia, the next fastest-expanding market, grew by an annual average of just 34 percent in that period.

Africa's cellphone boom has taken the industry by surprise. Africans have never been rabid telephone users; even Mongolians have twice as many land lines per person. And with most Africans living on $2 a day or less, they were supposed to be too poor to justify corporate investments in cellular networks far outside the more prosperous cities and towns.

But when African nations began to privatize their telephone monopolies in the mid-1990's, and fiercely competitive operators began to sell air time in smaller, cheaper units, cellphone use exploded. Used handsets are available for $50 or less in South Africa, an amount even Ms. Skhakhane's husband was able to finance with the little he saves from his factory job.

It turned out that Africans had never been big phone users because nobody had given them the chance. (emphasis added by yours truly)

The Africa-as-mobile-phone-oasis story is hardly new, but it's important nonetheless. African countries generally have some of the lowest Internet penetration rates in the world, so mobile phone growth raises the likelihood that more and more mobile providers will begin providing data access. It's the classic leapfrog story: why try to dig up the entire continent to deploy Internet cables when you can get access through the airwaves?

However, it's also worth noting that we shouldn't see mobile phones as a silver bullet for wiping out Africa's digital divide. Internet access via mobile phones is wonderful - I go crazy when my phone gets out of data service range - but it's not a replacement for affordable computers with cheap Internet access, as was argued by The Economist and the World Bank earlier this year. It would be very tempting for us to say, "No need to worry about Africa's digital divide - they've got cell phones, don't they?" but the fact of the matter is that none of us who take Internet access for granted would want to be relegated to using mobile phones as our sole source of access. Try going about your day-to-day business for a week with your computer shut off, using only your phone, and you'll quickly see what I mean.

So on the one hand, I'm very excited about the rapid adoption of mobile phones in Africa. It makes me even more eager to figure out open source strategies that would allow a person to access and post podcasts and blogs using only a run-of-the-mill mobile phone. If we're going to get mobcasting to work, Africa will be the obvious proving ground.

But on the other hand, I think we need to remember that mobile phones in themselves can't entirely solve any community's development needs. Different development challenges require different tools. No doubt, mobile phones will be near the top of the list -- but that list also includes $100 laptops, wind-up electricity generators, low-cost community radio transmitters, and the timeless ham radio. So let's not make policy decisions under the assumption that mobile phones are the only tool necessary for bridging the digital divide. Some day we may have the Swiss army knife-like tool that miraculously handles every development challenge in the book, but until then, we'll need to embrace a spectrum of technologies based on what's actually needed on the ground on a case-by-case basis. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 2:11 PM

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Please Join the Digital Divide Flickr Group

I've just set up a new Flickr group for people interested in sharing photos about the digital divide. For those of you who don't know Flickr, it's an uber-cool tool for sharing photos with large numbers of people. It has a variety of RSS feeds that make it very easy for users to subscribe to photo streams based on the photographer or the topic.

Anyway, if you like to take pictures that might be of interest to the group, please join us.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 2:02 PM

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August 23, 2005

Verizon, Yahoo Launch Low-Cost Broadband Service

This morning, Verizon and Yahoo announced the launch of a new low-cost broadband service. The move follows Yahoo's partnership to offer similarly priced broadband with SBC in various parts of the country. Quoting from an AP story on the subject:

For $14.95 [per month], subscribers will be able to download Web pages via a digital subscriber line at speeds of up to 768 kilobits and upload data at 128 kilobits. The cheaper service, which requires a one-year contract and has a price hike after 12 months, offers Yahoo premium services, such as antivirus protection, on-demand music videos and unlimited photo storage, according to an advertisement on Yahoo's site.

All in all, this seems like a very positive step. US broadband has been too expensive for too many people for too long. SBC's and Verizon's decision to lower the price point on basic broadband services will hopefully force their competitors to do the same, lowering the costs of high-speed Internet access for disadvantaged families. It will be interesting to see how technology activists in low-income communities react to the announcement. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 11:09 AM

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August 16, 2005

Stampede, Panic at Low-Cost Laptop Sale

Just saw this story about a near riot that took place during a school laptop sale in Virginia.

A rush to purchase $50 used laptops turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far as to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line. "This is total, total chaos," said Latoya Jones, 19, who lost one of her flip-flops in the ordeal and later limped around on the sizzling blacktop with one foot bare.

An estimated 5,500 people turned out at the Richmond International Raceway in hopes of getting their hands on one of the 4-year-old Apple iBooks. The Henrico County school system was selling 1,000 of the computers to county residents. New iBooks cost between $999 and $1,299. Officials opened the gates at 7 a.m., but some already had been waiting since 1:30 a.m. When the gates opened, it became a terrifying mob scene. People threw themselves forward, screaming and pushing each other. A little girl's stroller was crushed in the stampede. Witnesses said an elderly man was thrown to the pavement, and someone in a car tried to drive his way through the crowd.

I really wonder what caused this to escalate into such a dangerous situation. A combination of back-to-school shopping impatience and the pressure for parents to give their children a laptop seem the likely culprits. So much for the idea that a $100 laptop would be a boon for the developing world -- tell that to low-income US families with kids heading back to school.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 5:31 PM

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August 11, 2005

Will a New Satellite Help Bridge Australasia's Digital Divide?

New Scientist magazine reports on the launch of a new satellite that will offer broadband Internet access across southeast Asia and Australia:

An Ariane V rocket launched the world's heaviest-ever civilian telecommunications satellite from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana on Thursday. The launch represents a bold venture into broadband internet service....

IPSTAR is the fourth satellite to be launched by a subsidiary of Thailand's largest telecommunications company, the Shin Corporation, and so is also called THAISAT 4. The first three satellites provide standard satellite services, but IPSTAR is designed specifically to provide broadband service comparable to DSL or cable modems direct to individual customers in the Asia-Pacific region, from south-east Asia to Australia and New Zealand....

The big question is how many people will buy a satellite internet service. So far, it has only really found acceptance in areas beyond the reach of DSL or cable modems. But IPSTAR also hopes to compete directly against the wired services. "There are a lot of eyes on this satellite," says John McCarthy of Loral Space and Communications in New York, which built the craft.

What remains to be seen is the monthly price for the service. I imagine it will be much higher than the average Indonesian or Thai can afford, but might make an impact in expanding the number of rural telecentres in southeast asia and rural Australia.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 1:52 PM

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June 23, 2005

Three Billion People, Three Million Villages

Professor Larry Press of Cal State University is giving a presentation right now about international benchmarks for bridging the digital divide. Based on his research, he's concluded that bridging the digital divide internationally will require bringing broadband Internet access to approximately three billion people residing in three million rural villages. Takes your breath away, doesn't it? -andy

Posted by acarvin at 11:35 PM

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Internet Access at Libraries Better Than Ever - But Often Rationed

I'm quoted today in a new AP wire story about the American Library Association's latest survey on Internet access in libraries. Here's a clip. -andy

Virtually every U.S. public library now offers free Internet access but most ration it, inhibiting the ability of lower-income families to benefit from the Information Age. Libraries in Fresno County, Calif., impose a half-hour limit during peak periods, but one branch reported that patrons needed two hours or more of computer time just to fill out online job applications for a new Home Depot store. Typically, two to seven people are waiting for a computer to become free at the main library....

In a study released Thursday, the American Library Association said 99.6 percent of libraries are now connected to Internet, with all but a handful offering access to the public. That compares with 20.9 percent in 1994 when the study was first conducted.... For the first time, libraries were asked about their ability to meet demand. Seventy percent of libraries said there aren't enough computer terminals during peak periods, while another 16 percent said there's always a shortage. Shortages are most common in high-poverty and urban areas, the study found....

"While most of America's middle class has Internet access at home, there's still a digital divide among low-income citizens, people with limited education, ethnic minorities and other groups," said Andy Carvin, an expert in improving access to technology and the Internet. Carvin is particularly concerned about lines and time limits, saying it's not always reasonable to simply ask patrons to come back. "For students, they have a limited turnaround time to conduct research or do homework," Carvin said. "For many low-income residents working multiple jobs just to make ends meet, they lack the flexibility to come during low-use hours."

Posted by acarvin at 8:35 PM

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June 22, 2005

Getting Ready to Start the Conference

It's just before 9:30am here in Seoul, and we're about to start the conference. The conference is at the Sheraton Walker Hill Hotel; we're sharing space with government ministers from North and South Korea, who are having negotiations two floors directly below us. There is a lot of security here because of the negotations; we must have passed 200 policemen as we drove uphill to the hotel. There's also lots of media present; I saw CNN and BBC crews wandering around downstairs. Maybe they'll accidentally wander into my session and give us some free air time. :-) -andy

Posted by acarvin at 8:22 PM

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June 18, 2005

Saturday at CTCNet

Today's been a busy day here at the CTCNet conference; I began the morning by hosting a workshop about the Digital Divide Network website. I did the session in the computer lab, which meant all the attendees got to play around with the website using the laptops available there. It was fun talking about various website features, such as blogs and online communities, as participants would spontaneously post new blog entries or start new communities. They asked lots of good questions, and even managed to catch a few minor bugs in the site.

After the session, I went back to work with my colleagues from IDRC whom we've partnered with to write a book about the telecentre movement. We spent the time finishing a storyboard of the book, complete with fake chapters, fake quotes and fake pictures (well, the pictures were real - they just weren't the ones we'd actually use in the book).

We broke from our meetings for a couple of hours so I could attend the CTCNet lunch banquet. It was a really nice banquet; I sat with a group of activists from the faith-based technology organization TechMission, talking about how faith-based groups might play a role in getting the US government more engaged in the World Summit on the Information Society. During the banquet ceremonies, Nettrice Gaskins played a short video produced by a student in California in which he interviewed his peers about leadership and what it meant to them. The local member of Congress also spoke; unfortunately I didn't catch her name and it wasn't listed in the program, but I will have to track her down, because she was the best political speaker I've seen at CTCNet in the last five years. She talked about how she was one of the first members of Congress to start using a Blackberry; she'd prefer to use email as the primary tool to engage her constituents, but there's such a large digital divide here in Cleveland she still has to spend $80,000 each time she sends a newsletter to her entire district.

Following her speech, there was a touching memorial video about the life of community media pioneer Dirk Koning. Dirk, who died unexpectedly earlier this year, founded the Grand Rapids Community Media Center, one of the most cutting edge public media facilities in the country. His death has been a tragic loss to the movement, so the memorial was a fitting tribute to him.

Unfortunately, I had to leave the banquet at that point for yet another meeting with the IDRC team. Once again, though, it was very productive, so by the time we wrapped up around 4pm we are all in a very good mood.

Now, it's just before 4:30pm, and I'm sitting in the CTCNet annual meeting. In a few minutes we'll have informal "birds of a feather" meetings on a variety of topics; I'll host a meetup for DDN members during the session.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 4:15 PM

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June 17, 2005

Cleveland's Digital Vision

The 14th annual CTCNet kicked off with a keynote speech from Dr. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, chief information officer of the city of Cleveland. Mayberry-Stewart noted that Cleveland faces enormous challenges: it ranks #1 in poverty among America's big cities, and its high school graduation rate is only 47 percent - amazingly, twice better what it was two years ago.

However, 70% of high-paying jobs to be created in northeast Ohio are expected to be in information technology. "You will no be able to live or breathe without having to interact with technology," she said.

"It's an economic development engine," Mayberry-Stewart continued. "When we're looking at companies (to relocate to Cleveland), we need to be able to show that our workforce is able to stack up to any other city that we would be competing with."

She noted that Cleveland mayor Jane Campbell has stated her vision is to "develop a growing online community that bridges the digital divide with access for all Cleveland." The city is developing a tiered approach to improving digital literacy in the city, involving both the private sector and civil society. "It's really a partnership of the public and the private coming together," she said. "It also means we have to make significant capital investments."

When she first got to Cleveland, about 317 of 10,000 city workers were using email. "Technology allows you to communicate and connect. So we immediately started a project to train employees on basic computer proficiency skills." Now there are over 3,000 city workers using email.

"When we think of our communities, our employees are our communities. So we need to think about working in-house as well as working outside."

"We want to make sure that we have technology for everyone - outside city hall and inside. The challenge there is that we have a very mobile workforce, such as building inspectors who need to use handheld devices.... So it should be anyone, anywhere for any thing. Fifty buildings are being converted into voice over IP.

But bridging the digital divide in Cleveland is no easy task. "If you're the #1 poverty city, paying for DSL or a cable modem can be an expensive proposition," she noted.

"There are a lot of opportunities to quickly build out technologies so you can get them out to the community. We're laying fiber... We want to make sure this will be a smart building, a smart neighborhood.... So that allows us to get our tentacles out into the community and close the gap that is the digital divide."

Cleveland's CTC strategy is to focus on high-impact initiatives, ensuring collaboration with multi-sector partners. "In order to get anything done, it takes partnerships." They pay particular attention to digital literacy in low-income households, creating a program "that engages the whole community." They hope to get 30,000 low-income households trained over the next five years, using a city-wide digital literacy certification standard, the IC3 standard. The city hopes to have at least one CTC in each of the city's 21 wards.

Mayberry-Stewart ended her presentation by reading a proclamation from Mayor Campbell declaring today as Cleveland Digital Literacy Day.

Posted by acarvin at 9:53 AM

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June 16, 2005

Evening CTC Tour

Tonight at the CTCNet conference, I had a chance to tour two local community technology centers. Our first visit was to the Community Training & Technology Center (CTTC), run by the Cleveland Housing Network. The center focuses on improving local residents' financial literacy skills and prepare them for home ownership. Nearly 600 residents have taken a computer skills course there aimed to create a "culture of use" among novice users. They also have the opportunity to go through home ownership counseling and training, during which they learn how to avoid predatory lending practices and other potential hazards of the home buying process. Others come to the center for money management training and free tax preparation. They're also building affordable housing for chronically homeless families who enroll in their training programs.

We continued our tour, passing through numerous neighborhoods in which nearly all the buildings and homes were boarded up. Some showed no signs of development, while others clearly were being restored for the housing market. Eventually, we reached ASC3, the Ashbury Senior Computer Community Center. Wanda Davis, ASC3's executive director, and their resident VISTA volunteer introduced us to the facility. In one room, a group of senior citizens were practicing basic Internet skills, many of them working in pairs and assisting each other. We spent much of the time hanging out in the adjacent lab, enjoying some refreshments and talking about the challenges and opportunities for introducing Internet skills to seniors. The center has graduated around 200 inner city residents, the majority of whom are local elderly.

Here's a video clip of Want Davis talking about working at the CTC. I'll try to post more clips later but I have to go host a happy hour now. :-) -andy

Posted by acarvin at 7:54 PM

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June 9, 2005

The MyPyramid.gov Saga, Continued

The Wichita Eagle has posted an update on MyPyramid.gov, which I wrote about here a couple of months ago. As you may recall, the USDA launched a new Food Pyramid website without any offline way for the public to get information about the new pyramid, such as by phone, fax or mail. The website also had accessibility problems for people with disabilities, and was English only, even though Latinos have been documented to face certain health problems because of nutrition.

In the latest twist to the story, a group of disability activists contacted the USDA and said the Food Pyramid needed to be made available in Braille. The USDA didn't have plans to do this, so the two groups partnered with each other and are now developing the idea. Meanwhile, though, the article goes on to note that major accessibility challenges remain for the disabled and other groups when it comes to accessing online government information. I even get quoted a bit in the article, which is pretty cool. So check it out when you get a chance.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 12:03 PM

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May 22, 2005

Transforming Estonia into E-Stonia

Ivar Tallo chats with conference attendees

This morning, Ivar Tallo of the Estonian E-Governance Academy gave a case study about his country's e-government successes. The E-Governance Academy was created three years ago to promote Estonia's e-government successes around the world, particularly in the former Soviet Union.

"We are a very small country," Tallo said. "Our population is 1.4 million people. But we have our own language, our own culture, and we have to sustain it."

When the Soviet Union collapsed 15 years ago, Estonia faced an incredible opportunity: to build a government from scratch. "A big part of the story from 1991 to 2004 was building e-government and an information society."

Today, around 52% of the population has Internet access and 91% have mobile phones even though the country's GDP is generally much lower than western European countries. All schools are connected to the Internet, and there are more than 700 public access points around the country. There's also an enormous proliferation of free wi-fi, including access at all Estonian gas stations. (As an aside, he said to the audience, "Look guys, the UAE can learn a good lesson about providing free wi-fi rather than charging 20 euros a day at a hotel like we have to pay here. Free wi-fi is good business.") Additionally, e-banking rates are also among the highest in the world. "I don't even remember the last time I went to a bank; we all do it over the Internet."

Tallo said that many people assume Estonia's success is simply because of the location and population size; however, he pointed out that Estonia's neighbors, Latvia and Lithuania, have almost half the Internet penetration rate as Estonia's. Estonia invests significantly in ICT development - approximately one percent of the national budget each year for the last decade. "We've formed a general consensus among the political forces in Estonia that ICT investments are necessary. In 1991, we looked around and said, 'Okay, we now have an independent country but we still don't live like Finns do.' So we had to make priorities, including ICT development."

"We never had a national strategy; when we started in 1991, we didn't know where to go. So we created principles of information policy that were passed by the parliament." This led to project-based development guided by these principles. They also had little baggage from previous practices: as a new country, they could develop e-government with a clean slate. "One of the main things isn't introducing ICT but changing procedures and rules, and we were quite fortunate to do so because there wasn't much resistance."

Tallo noted the importance of Project Tiger Leap, an initiative started in 1996 to connect all Estonian computers to the Internet. They completed the task in 1999, one of the first countries in the world to do so. Estonia also managed to connect all local governments by 2001, and all libraries by 2002. Meanwhile, a private sector initiative called Look@World has worked to promote the information society to the general public. The program taught basic Internet use to 100,000 Estonians - 10% of the population - over the course of two years. "Of course the companies weren't just there for good will - they benefited a lot," he said. "The public started using e-banking and other services, saving companies a lot of money."

"Five years ago, Estonia introduced what was called the e-cabinet," he said. "It wasn't really difficult to put flat-screen computers in the ministers' meeting room; it was a bit harder to get the ministers to use them." But the program has made decision-making at the ministerial level much more transparent. "Our ministers now tend to participate in cabinet meetings even when they're not physically there.... Other countries at the time said we couldn't do it, but we were a new country, so we didn't know, so we just went ahead and did it."

"The cabinet meetings start at 10am; the first decisions are published online by 10:15," he continued. "So it's a rather convenient tool for the public, not just for the government."

"Introducing ICT is also having an impact on corruption... There is now much less corruption, and the most successful of Central and Eastern European countries in terms of transparency."

Meanwhile, Estonia will be the first country to offer nation-wide offsite e-voting, later this year. "Anyone with a national ID smart card and a card reader will be able to vote wherever they may have Internet access," Tallo said. They've also launched a website, http://tom.riik.ee, called I Decide Today. The site allows the public to file official requests for new policies or legislation. If their recommendation gets rejected, the government is required to give a formal explanation why they made that decision. For example, Estonia never had daylight savings time, because it is so far north. But the public proposed it for a variety of reasons and it was adopted.

Posted by acarvin at 2:55 AM

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A Pleasant Surprise at the GCC E-Gov Conference

We've just begun the second day of the GCC e-government conference. The first speaker of the day, a representative from Cisco's regional office, is now presenting.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the number of speakers who have addressed the digital divide in their presentations. About 75% of the dozen speakers so far have addressed the issue in one form or another. James Jarrett of Intel discussed government-assisted access programs around the world, from Brazil's PC Conectado program to a new initiative in Saudi Arabia to expand at-home computer access over the next five years.

I was particularly interested in Rehab Lootah's presentation about Dubai's e-government strategy. She talked about a new eCitizen certification initiative. Working with the ICT training company New Horizons, Dubai is offering a reduced-cost ICT training course for local residents. The full course includes two hours of basic PC training, two hours of Internet fundamentals, another two hours of email fundamentals, then 10 hours of online services training, focusing specifically on e-government. The 10-hour section of the course shows how to use Dubai's e-gov portals for registering new vehicles, renewing health cards, getting entry permits for friends and family, bill payments and other services. Graduates of the course are given access to a smart card that allows them to get discounts for various goods and services across the city. They've even started publishing a local e-gov journal for the general public entitled "e4all" -- a name that resonated quite well with me considering my own work on e-government for all, which I'll be talking about at the conference later today.

Sad news to report, though: the Kuwaiti gentleman who had a heart attack during the morning conference session yesterday passed away en-route to the hospital. People at the event clearly seem rather introspective because of this; our hearts and prayers are certainly with his family.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 1:27 AM

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May 21, 2005

Governments, Posterity and the Restaurant Business

Jens Mortensen of Oracle is now talking about challenges faced by e-government initiatives, particularly a lack of use by the public and a lack of smart interface design. He said it's not surprising that governments don't get it right the first time around: "The government is often like a restaurant that closes at lunch and dinnertime," he said.

Meanwhile, he told a story about finding the perfect handheld device. He said he spent several years searching for a mobile, handheld tool that would capture his thoughts, not lose power at inopportune moments, and preserve information in a permanent, interoperable way that would allow his daughter to read his ideas 20 years from now. His solution: a small moleskin notepad. Perhaps not the answer the audience wanted to hear, but it got a chuckle from the crowd.

Posted by acarvin at 5:20 AM

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Barriers to E-Government

We've just heard from Ms. Rehab Lootah, Senior Business Manager of Dubai's e-government initiative, who talked about Dubai's newest programs to improve e-government access. They hope to reach half of the public by 2007. Meanwhile, Ali Al Kamali of Datamatix talked about a recent survey they conducted of regional policymakers. When asked about barriers to e-government, respondants were somewhat concerned about a lack of equitable Internet access; interestingly, they were much more concerned about a lack of ICT literacy skills by the public, as well as a lack of understanding about e-gov by fellow policymakers.

Now, Intel VP James Jarrett is speaking about digital cities, particularly those that are using mobile and wi-fi for e-gov applications, like automatic car parking meters. I'm recording the presentation in case it's worth podcasting later. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 1:53 AM

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Opening of GCC E-Government Conference

It's 9am here in Dubai and the first full day of the GCC E-Government conference is about to get under way. There are probably several hundred people here, mostly from the Arabian Gulf, with several dozen oversees visitors. The wi-fi in the plenary room is strong, but there are no electrical outlets in sight, so I will have to use my laptop sparingly lest my power run out too early in the day. -andy

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May 14, 2005

Telecottage Tour, Day Two

A boy uses a computer at the Sárszentlorinc telecottage

"Andy, we are leaving now," Mátyás said, opening the door to my room. I looked at my watch; it was 6:30am. My head felt like it had been hit by a rubber mallet, as did my stomach. I stood up and felt the world had shifted 15 degrees to the left. I then remembered the mayor. The palinka. What on earth had I done to myself?

I quickly got dressed -- apparently I hadn't taken off that much clothes the night before -- and joined Mátyás and Eva in the car. Eva hadn't me a bottle of vegetable juice and a bag of chocolate wafers. "This is your breakfast," she said.

We drove the short distance back to the telecentre, where we met the mayor and the town architect. The mayor looked like he'd spent the previous day relaxing at a spa. He gave me a devious smile then slammed a handful of shotglasses on the table, the bottle of palinka not far behind.

"No, no, no," the three of us replied, laughing. He shrugged his shoulders and poured himself a shot before serving the rest of us coffee. Then another bottle of palinka appeared; this time, though, it was wrapped with a bow. The mayor and his staff offered it to me as a token for my visit. I promised him I would drink some later - but not for breakfast.

With a dose of caffeine to get the day started, we went downhill to the church, which was ensconced in scaffolding. The mayor and the architect walked over to the door and checked the lock. Then the mayor then reached upwards and unlatched a metal ladder that led up to the first level of the scaffolding. He darted up to the first level like a spider monkey and looked around for a moment.

"I'm glad we're not going to have to go up that way," I joked.

"What do you mean?" Mátyás asked, looking at me quizzically.

For a moment I didn't understand his question; then I saw the architect follow the mayor up the ladder. To my horror, Mátyás and Eva followed. The truth hit me like a ton of bricks collapsing from the top of an old church. We were going to climb 15 stories, but not from the inside. We'd do it from the outside. And I suddenly could taste the palinka from last night.

The mayor enjoys the view from the church's scaffolding

Even though my heart and mind told me that this was the worst of all possible ideas, I somehow found my hands grasping the cold, dusty metal of the ladder, slowly inching upwards as mouthfuls of whitewash fell from the floors above me. I climbed up to the first level and looked around. To my left was the outer church wall. To my right was a thin plastic mesh that gave the illusion of enclosure. Wood planks served as the floor, and rickety metal pipes pretended to be handrails. And yet I climbed upward.

"This is stupid, ridiculous," I muttered to myself, feeling like I was digging myself into a hole that I'd never get out of. The higher I climbed, the more I wanted to turn around. But I kept concentrating on the metal rungs of the ladder above me and the wood planks below me, so it got to the point that I wasn't really paying attention to the progress I'd been making. Then I looked at the church and saw its clock -- at eye level.

Fortunately, Mátyás and Eva were only another level above me. Even though I was now actually scared out of my wits, I felt I had to make it up to their level or I'd never forgive myself. Now at steeple height, I watched the mayor darting around, still like a spider monkey, ready to keep going upwards. Finally, I said the word I'd been chanting as a mantra for at least 10 floors: "No."

To my great relieve, neither Mátyás nor Eva had a desire to go any higher, so they began to go down the ladders. This part was actually the worst for me, since I could see where I was going. For the first several floors down I kept thinking, "Falling is certain death," which I thought would go away when I got down a little further. But then, the thoughts just changed to "Falling is quadriplegia." Eventually, though, I reached the "Falling is a broken leg" stage, and I then reached the ground. I couldn't wait to get back in the car.

Hitting the road again, we drove to the town of Sásd, which hosted a telecottage in the local library. The librarian gave us a tour and talked about the mobile library services they offered to surrounding communities; I noshed on some croissants hoping the bread would settle my stomach.

Back in the car, we began the 90-minute drive to Kajdacs. The further we drove, the sicker I felt. I started having visions of forcing Mátyás off the road so I could wretch in a hedgerow. Fearing the worse, I had no choice but to come clean. "I don't feel well -- could we stop in the next village?"

Hungarian roadsign directing people to the local telecottage

Mátyás and Eva took pity on me and drove slower to the next town, so the curves wouldn't make my situation worse. Soon, we reached the town, where we found a local pub. I went inside and found the bathroom, which wreaked of last night's -- or worse, this morning's -- drunks. I sat there and prayed for a while, hoping for some kind of guidance or mercy. But instead I received my punishment: Thou Shall Not Get Sick. Instead, I'd have to spend the day with a twisted stomach and a lump in my throat that felt like it was going to rupture like football player with a bad case of appendicitis.

Returning outside, Eva offered me the front seat of the car. Amazingly this made a huge difference, as did the vegetable juice. I still didn't feel well, but I was composed enough to avoid making an ass of myself. We then arrived in Kajdacs, where the mayor and the telecottage manager greeted us. The computer lab was empty -- there'd be a teacher training in a little while -- so we met in a conference room, sitting with a group of local users representing different constituencies, including students, teachers, cultural activists and social workers. The telecottage was described again and again as the soul of the community - the place where everyone came to spend time with their neighbors, plan events, participate in community activities and develop new programs. In some ways, Internet access was incidental -- it was the real sense of community that brought people together.

A farmhouse in Kajdacs

After our meeting, I went outside to take some pictures. I soon got carried away, finding a picturesque water well and a small farm just a few doors away. I felt so far away from Budapest, particular watching pairs of chickens chase after each other. Soon, I saw the telecottage manager waving at me - it was time to come inside and have lunch. I was worried they were going to serve something heavy and spicy, which wouldn't react well with my stomach; instead, I enjoyed bowl after bowl of fisherman's soup, a fish stew seasoned with sweet paprika, served with fresh egg noodles and bread. It was very comforting.

Once lunch was done, I took the opportunity to check email. Because the lab would soon be occupied by local teachers, they sat me at the receptionist's desk instead. As luck would have it, the teachers started to stream in a few minutes later. For a moment I didn't understand why everyone was saying "Jo Napot" (hello) to me, but then I realized where I was sitting. Though I've tried to learn a few words of Hungarian, my pronunciation is an abomination, so I've been somewhat shy about using it. So I used the easiest word I could pronounce -- Szia, which sounds exactly like "see ya" but means hello or goodbye. This, in turn, caused some of the teachers to want to say more than "Jo Napot" to me, which eventually made them wonder why on earth the telecottage would employ an non-Hungarian speaker as their receptionist. I just didn't stand to reason.

Before leaving Kajdacs, I got permission to observe the training session for a few minutes. I took some pictures, but many of the teachers were a little self-aware and shy. I got a couple of decent pictures from what I could tell, though.

Hungarian and Roma kids use the telecottage's computers

From Kajdacs, we continued to Sárszentlorinc, a town with a large Roma (Gypsie) population and high unemployment. There, we visited a telecottage run by the local Lutheran church. The manager invited us to spend time with a group of local kids, both Roma and Hungarian, who were using the telecottage on the one day a week they could play games. This meant it was a popular day at the lab, so I had plenty of opportunities to take pictures. We also got to see a collection of handicrafts made by villagers. The manager said the community is very low-skilled, so handicrafts is one of the few ways they can make a living. I offered to buy an ornament he had on display, but he generously insisted I keep it as a gift, along with some other souvenirs.

Next, we visit the village of Pusztahensce, whose telecentre was in a library by the local school. It was busy with students doing homework and chatting; I got to interview the mayor, half a dozen high school students and a local German teacher, who talked about how he used the telecentre while pursuing a graduate degree.

Our last stop of the day was Gyorkony, a village settled by ethnic Germans. The telecottage was located at the library, which offered many services to the disabled and senior citizens. Because many citizens worked for the local power company, there was a high proportion of at-home Internet access. So this allowed the telecottage to concentrate on underserved groups. Soon, they're going to open video conferencing with the county employment office, so people can come and receive online counseling without having to travel to the county seat.

Traditional wine cellars in Gyorkony

Soon we were met by our colleagues from Kajdacs; we then got back in our cars and drove a short distance to a wine cellar owned by the telecottage manager. Even though there are barely 1000 people in the village, nearly 300 of them own private wine cellars. They were beautiful old buildings, sometimes covered with thatched roofs, sloping into hillsides. It was simply beautiful getting to walk along the cellars near sunset; they reminded me of the Skansen open-air museum in Stockholm, but in a real community.

Before returning to the cellar, we walked uphill to a local dairy farm. The woman running the milking process invited us inside; she poured several gallons of fresh milk she'd just taken from the cows into a large vat, then ladled a fresh glass for me. It was the most refreshing thing I'd had in long time, the perfect way to finally settle my stomach. Outside, we walked further along so Mátyás could show me the "birds" they raised there. I started looking for chickens but nearly wet my pants when I saw a full-grown ostrich staring at me. The ostrich paced back and forth, watching to see what I would do next. Soon, the husband of the woman we'd met invited me to enter the gate towards the ostrich pen. Amazingly, the male ostrich dropped to the ground and started flaring its feathers, swaying its head back and forth.

"That's the way the bird tells us he's the best," Mátyás said. The farmer then found an ostrich egg, which he let me hold. I'd never held a full ostrich egg before so I was quite impressed by the weight.

Livia the telecottage manager sucks red wine from a barrel using a glass pipet

We then left the farm and returned to the cellar; there, we'd have a dinner of stuffed cabbage, which smelled delicious in the kitchen. First, though, I was invited to go down to the underground cellar, where I watched the Livia the telecottage manager suck a liter of white wine with a long, elegant glass pipet. She then repeated the process for the red wine.

Soon, dinner was served. The stuffed cabbage was a tasty as it smelled, and it was even better with sour cream and pepper sauce. The wines were excellent, too; the white was delicately sweet while the red was smoky and full-bodied -- though we had a hard time finding an appropriate Hungarian term for "smoky" without making it sound like I was saying "it tastes like smoke." It was a wonderful way to wrap up the day. As I told Mátyás, today was a day of firsts. I got to taste wine directly from the barrel, plus I got to drink milk directly from the cow. It would be difficult to top that.

Posted by acarvin at 4:58 AM

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May 8, 2005

Blast at Kabul Cybercafe Kills Three; Will the Telecentre Movement be a Target?

This morning, I was horrified to see a story on Yahoo News about an explosion at a Kabul Internet Cafe, killing three people. Just this week on the Digital Divide Network's DIGITALDIVIDE list, we've been having a theoretical discussion about whether a massive deployment of telecentres would positively impact development in Iraq. In one post, I wrote:

So let's say we could snap our fingers and have 1,000 telecentres across
Iraq. Imagine if each one of them addressed their community's most
pressing needs. Some of these telecentres would large the local
unemployed with the tools they need to gain new skills or start small
businesses. Others would focus developing e-mechanisms for the public to
interact with civil servants and government officials, making sure that
the new government addressed their needs effectively, no matter if they
spoke Arabic, Kurdi or Turkmen as their native language. Yet others
would assist local mosques in providing health care and human services
to people whose lives and livelihoods were destroyed during the war.

If telecentres are merely nonprofit cybercafes lacking any development
context, then I'd agree with you. But if we put that aside and see
telecentres as serving specific development goals based on each
community's particular needs and opportunities, I would have to be more
optimistic about the role they could play in helping Iraq get back on
its feet and prosper in the coming years.

Steve Eskow, on the other hand, took a more cynical view:

If the prevailing culture is one of fear, where a regular response to disagreement is violence, then telecenters can become part of the problem, part of that culture of violence.

If that is so, then we as practitioners won't automatically assume that 1000
telecenters in any culture anywhere will produce positive results. Our
obligations becomes to consider the ecology of the culture, the existing
divides, and existing commitment to democratic dialog, before we prescribe
telecenters.

And now we find this news about a bombing at a cybercafe in Kabul. While it's most likely the attack occurred because foreigners assembled there, it raises a disturbing question: will Internet outposts be seen as part of the "enemy" by these terrorists, because they are epicenters of knowledge, communications and burgeoning democracy? I shiver at the thought, and pray that we won't see a chilling effect in which public Internet access gets cut off in Afghanistan or Iraq for the sake of security.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 10:31 AM

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May 2, 2005

Call for Nominations: World Summit Awards USA

Hi everyone,

I'd like to announce the official opening of the World Summit Awards USA competition. An official event of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the World Summit Awards will take place in more than 150 countries around the globe. I'm serving as coordinator of the USA competition.

We're seeking nominations for the best websites from the USA in the following categories:

e-business
e-culture
e-entertainment
e-government
e-health
e-inclusion
e-learning
e-science

I've assembled a team of more than a dozen volunteers representing a range of expertise in online content. We will review the nominations and select a winner in each category; the winner will then represent the USA in the international competition.

To nominate a website, please visit here:

http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?id=93093

Nominations must be submitted no later than May 30, 2005. Winners will be announced by July 1, 2005.

Please feel free to share the URL and extend an invitation to colleagues to submit websites for the competition.

Posted by acarvin at 4:31 PM

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Ensuring that Govt Hurricane Alerts Don't Get Treated Like Spam

An AP story on Yahoo News this morning discusses how emergency alert emails from local government leaders in Indian River County, Florida,
are blocked by AOL as spam. Indian River County, which happens to be one county south of where I grew up, implemented an emergency email system to get the word out to local residents when things such as mandatory hurricane evacuations go into effect. Over 4,000 residents subscribe to the service. The only problem is that AOL's servers list the county's emergency coordinator email address as spam; so whenever he tried to send out an emergency alert, residents who happened to be AOL users didn't get the memo. AOL says it's now working on a way to let the messages through.

I should certainly hope so. I often write about "e-government for all" -- the idea of ensuring that online government services are accessible to all constituents, no matter their education level, economic situation or disability. Too often, it seems, government agencies don't implement simple communication mechanisms that can reach the public in a timely manner. In this case, the government had the right idea, but concerns over spam treated the messages as if they were porn or Cialis advertisements.

Governments should work closely with communications companies to ensure that emergency emails and text messages get through to the public as intended. There's no excuse for people not knowing to get out of harm's way just because an ISP's anti-spam software wasn't smart enough to recognize a legitimate emergency communication from a legitimate official source. We may want to explore creating the digital equivalent of an emergency broadcast system. Just like TV broadcasts can be automatically pre-empted in times of emergency, similar emergency messages should be able to get out to email and SMS text users in a prompt fashion, while at the same time guaranteeing that the system can't be exploited for nefarious purposes.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 9:30 AM

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April 22, 2005

MyPyramid.gov: Achieving E-Health for All?

I've just published an article on the Digital Divide Network about the USDA's MyPyramid.gov and the problems faced by marginalized populations accessing government nutritional information that's only available on the Internet. A reprint of the article can be found below. -andy

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This week, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) unveiled its newest food pyramid. First launched in 1992, the food pyramid is intended as an easy-to-use tool to convey healthy nutrition guidelines to the general public. Unlike the previous pyramid, which was a one-size-fits-all dietary recommendation, the new pyramid is actually a collection of a dozen different pyramids, each one designed to target specific groups of people based on their age, gender and activity level. That way, individuals may select a pyramid that's personalized for their health needs.

On Tuesday, the USDA launched MyPyramid.gov, a new website for disseminating the updated food pyramid to the general public. While health experts debate the nutritional merits of the new pyramid, it's raised eyebrows among some activists involved in the digital divide movement because of the way the new pyramid was rolled out primarily as an online resource. Since the website is currently the only easy way for members of the public to determine which personalized food pyramid applies to them, it begs the question of how offline populations will gain access to these new guidelines.

Earlier this week, I posted one of the first stories on this issue on my blog. In it, I noted that many of the potential target audiences for the new pyramid, such as low-income households and ethnic minorities, face many challenges gaining access to the Internet, thus denying them easy access to important health information. Here at the Digital Divide Network, we've written extensively about this issue, which we often refer to as "e-government for all": in other words, ensuring that all members of the public have equal access to government services and information, no matter their income, education level, ethnicity, language spoken or physical ability. Quoting our 2004 report E-Government for All: Ensuring Equitable Access to Online Government Services:

It is all too common, for example, that information on most government websites is skewed to the needs and abilities of highly educated citizens. For low-literate populations, the Web remains an untapped resource. People with disabilities, such as the visually impaired, continue to struggle with government websites that don't address their accessibility needs.... Millions of people are effectively cut off from these increasingly essential resources as long as government information and services are not offered appropriately to accommodate their needs.... As U.S. government agencies expand e-government, a pressing question remains what will happen to these underserved, marginalized populations, particularly as traditionally offline government services are replaced entirely by online services.

The MyPyramid.gov website raises similar concerns. In this particular case, certain populations that would benefit the most from accessing the latest government nutritional guidelines are some of the least-likely populations to have access to the technology or the skills to accomplish this.

By The Numbers: Obesity, Overweightness and the Digital Divide

According to the US Surgeon General's website, ethnicity and income level are contributing factors to obesity and overweightness:

• In women, overweight and obesity are higher among members of racial and ethnic minority populations than in non-Hispanic white women.

• In men, Mexican Americans have a higher prevalence of overweight and obesity than non-Hispanic whites or non-Hispanic blacks.

• For all racial and ethnic groups combined, women of lower socioeconomic status are approximately 50% more likely to be obese than those of higher socioeconomic status.

And it's not just adults faced with these health challenges, according to the USDA pamphlet, Facts About Childhood Obesity and Overweightness:

• Low-income white adolescents were about 2.6 times as likely to be overweight as those in middle- or high-income families.

• Overweight and obesity rates among children and adolescents were highest for Mexican American males age 6 to 11 (17 percent), African American females age 6 to 19 (16 percent), and adolescents age 12 to 19 from low-income households (16 percent).

Paradoxically, many of the demographic groups faced with these health challenges correspond with the same groups that are most likely to be on the wrong side of the digital divide. According to the US Department of Commerce report, A Nation Online 2004, only 37.2% of Latinos and 45.6% of African Americans have Internet access at home, compared with 65.1% of white households. The statistics are even starker when you examine household Internet access by income: while 82.9% of households earning $75,000 or more are online, only 31.2% of households making $15,000 or less are online. The deeper you dig into the data, the clearer it becomes: ethnicity, income and education level remain barriers to bridging the digital divide. This fact has enormous consequences when it comes to relying on the Internet as a tool for conveying public health information to at-risk audiences.

The USDA's Response

Following the launch of MyPyramid, I contacted the USDA and spoke with Jackie Haven of the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion to learn more about the USDA's strategy. "[The Web] seemed like such an excellent resource and a way to reach many masses of people," she said, noting the site received 62 million hits yesterday. Haven explained that the original pyramid, launched in 1992, came with a 32-page booklet that offered details on nutrition, "but no one had really seen it." Creating a website with nutritional information, therefore, seemed like a natural course of action.

"With the Internet, it's really possible to personalize this a little bit more for consumers," she continued. "So it really seemed like the best and only avenue to reach more people and to help personalize it for everybody."

Haven described Tuesday's launch of the MyPyramid website as part of a three-year initiative to get the word out about the new nutritional guidelines. For the time being, the launch is focusing on the website, though she expects other agencies and programs, such as the Food Stamps program, to tailor the guidelines for different audiences, including low-income families, Spanish speakers and others. "We thought, 'Let's get it out there, let's get the feedback,' and we'll continue to grow and refine what we have on the Web," she said.

I noted the concerns that many of us in the digital divide movement have regarding equitable access to government information for all members of the public, and asked whether the USDA would contemplate launching public campaigns that utilized PSAs, toll-free numbers and other off-line communications tools. "I think we may come to that point," Haven replied. "If we don't, there are other agencies that might." She went on to describe some of the educational materials available through the website, which could be downloaded by schools and intermediary organizations to pass on directly to members of the public who aren't online. "There are also spin-off publications that are being printed as we speak," she noted. This summer, the USDA will launch an initiative to publicize the new pyramid to all US public schools via the discounted lunch program. For now, though, people interested in the new guidelines will have to find access to the Internet.

Regarding whether the USDA had any intentions to publish MyPyramid.gov in Spanish, Haven said, "A lot of the material has been translated but it hasn't appeared yet. So we do plan to reach out to those audiences as well." I then turned the conversation to access for people with disabilities, noting that there is a federal US statute known as Section 508 that requires government websites to be designed with accessibility in mind. "Oh, absolutely, that was in the contract, 508 compliance," she assured me.

Needless to say, Haven was surprised when I informed her that my rudimentary tests of the website's homepage and an additional page suggested the site had not reached compliance. "It certainly needs to be 508 compliant," she said, before assuring me that my concerns would be raised with appropriate people within the USDA to correct these mistakes.

Conclusion

In many ways, the case of MyPyramid.gov is a classic example of the challenge faced by government agencies when it comes to achieving e-government for all. There is a strong desire to utilize the Internet as a tool for reaching the general public. In that regard, I applaud them. But the desire to get information and services out to the public as rapidly and as cost-effectively as possible sometimes means that traditional off-line channels such as public service announcements, storefront government access points and telephone services get marginalized, postponed or left out of the equation entirely. In a country where two-thirds of the population is online, it's tempting to shrug off these concerns. But the reality is we have millions of people without Internet access or the skills to use it, not to mention millions of people with disabilities whose Internet experience is severely curtailed because of insensitive website design.

There are some very simple steps the USDA could take. For example, they should create a PSA and print promotion campaign that would encourage the public to either go to the website or call a toll-free number for more information. The toll-free number would allow people to talk with an operator in English, Spanish or through an assistive device. The operator would look up the appropriate pyramid for the person, describe it to them, and dispatch appropriate materials either on paper, braille or as an audio book. Materials could also be distributed through post offices, libraries, schools, community centers, health clinics and other community institutions. Some of these materials, it seems, are already in the pipeline for later this year. For the sake of equitable access, though, it would have been much better if at least some of these offline materials had been made available at the same time the website went public. That way, people without Internet access would have had alternative mechanisms for accessing this information.

Fortunately, it seems that Jackie Haven at the USDA recognizes the limitations of the food pyramid's online strategy. "Of course, the Web can't reach everybody, but we're doing our best here, and with the kind of hits we've been having we know we're reaching somebody. At least we've gotten, I think, a fairly decent start, but we know we have our work cut out for us."

Indeed, the USDA -- as well as government agencies large and small -- has their work cut out for them. So it's incumbent upon those of us involved in the digital divide movement to support government efforts to use the Internet for public services, while at the same time getting them to understand that relying solely on the Internet to convey information and services is a sure-fire way to marginalize segments of the general population even further.

Posted by acarvin at 11:57 AM | Comments (2)

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April 20, 2005

The Mystery of the Food Pyramid: An E-Government Fiasco?

In case you haven't heard, there's been a change at the US Department of Agriculture. No, we don't have a new Agriculture Secretary or an official national vegetable; instead, we've got a new food pyramid.

The Old Pyramid	The New Pyramid

While the old pyramid was far from perfect, it was readible. You could look at the pictures of the various foods within each section of the pyramid, and get a sense of what proportion of your diet should be made up of those foods. (Personally, I follow more of a Mediterranean diet than anything else, but that's another blog entry.) There wasn't much to explain with it. We could all quibble over whether it was over-reliant on carbs or whatever, but at least we knew where things stood.

Now, with the new pyramid, it seems that the folks at the USDA have taken a play out of the Department of Homeland Security's book, creating a color-coded pyramid. It's somewhat remiscent of that infamous color-coded security alert symbol; just imagine it being turned on its side and skewed in Photoshop. But the amazing thing about the new pyramid is that it doesn't have any food symbols or text. It's just a pyramid with an uneven rainbow shooting to the top, with the little recycle dude icon pulling a Tenzing Norgay on the left side.

In case you're not thoroughly confused yet, there's actually more than one new pyramid. In fact, there are 12, based on your age and level of activity. In some ways, it's a good thing that they're acknowledging that no one food pyramid could apply to everyone, but having 12 might be seen as overwhelming to some people. Because there are 12 different pyramids, it's no longer possible to print it on cereal boxes or other food packages, unless you just want to show the standard pyramid. Instead, if you'd like to know your perfect pyramid, you're expected to go online to the MyPyramid.gov website, fill out a form, and wait for the website to recommend a pyramid for you. (Interestingly, I've tried it three times today; each time it's hung for about two minutes, then timed out with an error message.)

I truly, truly hope the USDA does more than just this website to educate the public, though. As I've written before in my work on e-government for all, it's poor policymaking to assume that all constituents will have equal access to the Internet or the skills to use it. Therefore, you need to make sure you use alternative offline channels -- TV, radio, print, in-person meetings, etc -- to make government services and information available to the people who need it.

Unfortunately, when you look at various demographic groups, there's a higher likelihood of lower-income, less-educated people to eat a poor diet. Just the audience you'd want to reach in a public health campaign, right? Paradoxically, they're also the ones least likely to have Internet access or Internet skills. This makes it even more important to invest in large-scale offline campaigns to get health-related information directly into their hands.

Meanwhile, don't get me started on Web accessibilty for the disabled. I ran an accessibility test on the homepage and the Inside the Pyramid page, which describes the pyramid in greater detail. Both failed even the most basic accessibility standards; in the case of the homepage, it was because it didn't have alternative text descriptions for all the images on the homepage.

I hope the new pyramid(s) will lead to a healthy - no pun intended - debate in this country over what is a proper diet and what isn't. I just worry that the populations who would benefit the most from this dialogue will be left on the sidelines, eating more Big Macs and other nutritional train wrecks. In the meantime, I'll just sit back, relax, and wait for MyPyramid.gov to tell me which pyramid is the right one for me... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 1:59 PM

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Tom DeLay's Digital Divide

In a recent radio interview about judicial activism, congressional firebrand Tom DeLay went out of his way to attack US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy - for his use of the Internet.

The main thrust of DeLay's comments labeled Kennedy as an irresponsible judicial activist. "We've got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international law, not the Constitution of the United States? That's just outrageous," DeLay told Fox News Radio on Tuesday. But as icing on the cake, he added this perplexing nugget of scorn: "And not only that, but he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous."

I did a double-take when I read the transcript earlier this morning. No matter what you think of DeLay's politics or Kennedy's perspectives on jurisprudence, the whole idea of attacking a Supreme Court justice because they use the Internet when researching cases is absurd, not to mention disturbing. What exactly was DeLay trying to suggest with this remark? That the Internet is a treasure-trove of misguided case law and other judicial balderdash that should be avoided at all costs? That Internet users might succumb to dissenting viewpoints, historical documents or empirical data? That Supreme Court justices might become porn addicts, buy prescription drugs from Canada or - perish the thought - learn how to play Texas hold'em?

So far I haven't seen much of a response to this angle of the DeLay-Kennedy story, but Senator Dick Durban of Illinois caught on to it immediately. "Has the Internet become the devil's workshop?" Durban asked. "Is it some infernal machine now that needs to be avoided by all right-thinking Americans? What is Mr. DeLay trying to say, as he is stretching to lash out at judges who happen to disagree with his political point of view."

I really, really wonder what DeLay was driving at with his anti-Internet comment. Is it the Internet he hates, or is it Internet research? (Perhaps it's just research that troubles him.) Should we assume that DeLay bans his staff from researching policy issues online? Or that he ignores online correspondences from his constituents, because he sees it as somehow tainted? Is he against e-government, computers in the classroom or teaching Internet skills to encourage low-income citizens to enter the high-tech workforce?

Perhaps he supports all of these things. Perhaps not. But I think Congressman DeLay has a lot of explaining to do, so we can all understand why a well-respected jurist using the Internet to make informed decisions is so outrageous.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 1:21 PM

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April 19, 2005

Seeking Volunteer Judges for World Summit Awards USA Competition

As some of you may know, I'm the US representative for the World Summit Awards, an international competition to identify the world's best digital content in conjunction with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Nearly 170 countries will be submitting nominations for the contest; winners will be honored at the WSIS summit in Tunis this November.

Each country participating in the World Summit Awards will first host their own national competition to select the best digital content in a variety of categories, including e-education, e-culture, e-health and e-inclusion. As US representative to the international competition, it will be my job to select one winner in each category, then submit these winners to the international competition. US-based content producers will be able to submit their projects for consideration in the coming weeks; I'll have more information on the contest rules soon.

In the meantime, I would like to put together a small team of volunteers to assist me in selecting the winners for the US contest. The volunteers should be US-based experts in at least one of the contest categories (listed below), and be willing to assist in reviewing applications in early June. The review process will occur online, so no travel will be involved. Reviewers may not submit their own online content to the contest, though they may nominate content produced by others.

I'm seeking experts in these categories:

• e-culture
  
• e-education
  
• e-health
  
• e-government
  
• e-science
  
• e-business
  
• e-entertainment
  
• e-inclusion
  

I am also looking for at least one expert in Web accessibility for the disabled. While accessibility is not a content category in its own right, websites will be judged on their accessibility during the selection process.

If you are interested, please email me (no attachments, please) at acarvin @ edc . org. In your email, please include a brief description of your areas of expertise and your professional background. Thanks! -andy

Posted by acarvin at 1:53 PM

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March 26, 2005

Digital Divide Network: 6,600 Members in 115 Countries

For a long time, whenever people ask me where DDN members were from, I've usually said we have members from around 80 different countries, based on counting different domain names to the email list. But thanks to the new DDN website, I'm able to sort the list of website members according to country. I tried it this afternoon and I was astounded to find out that we now have more than 6,600 members from 115 countries! So apparently I had been low-balling my estimate by at least 30 countries.

If you're interested in seeing who's from a particular country, simply go to www.digitaldivide.net and type in the name of a country in the search engine, in the top right corner of the homepage. The site will then generate a list of all DDN content related to that country, including members. Interestingly, while US members still comprise the largest group by far, they are no longer in the majority. There are approximately 2,880 members from the US, equaling 43.5% of the entire membership. That means 56.6% of members are outside the US.

Here are the countries represented by DDN members:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chile, China, Congo/Brazzaville, Congo/Dem Rep, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liberia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, St. Lucia, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vatican City, Venezuela, Zambia and Zimbabwe

Posted by acarvin at 5:11 PM

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March 25, 2005

Podcast: Andy's WSIS Speech at the National Model UN Conference

I've just posted the audio of my keynote speech at the National Model United Nations Conference's WSIS simulation. Approximately 500 college students from several dozen countries participated. As I wrote in my previous post, they were an extraordinary group of young people. I really had a lot of fun talking with them.

Here's the MP3 of the speech:

http://www.andycarvin.com/podcasts/nmun.mp3

There's also an open-source OGG format version of the recording: simply change the end of the URL from .mp3 to .ogg if you prefer that format. (I can't hyperlink to it or podcast users will have both versions automatically downloaded onto their computers.)

Meanwhile, here's a copy of my Powerpoint from the presentation. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 8:54 AM | Comments (2)

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March 24, 2005

Movie Review: Local Voices, Global Visions

I'm riding on an Amtrak Acela train through snowbound Connecticut right now on my way to the National Model United Nations conference, where I'll be addressing a group of 500 youth delegates who are conducting a mock World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). To psych myself up for the talk, I brought along a DVD of TakingITGlobal's new documentary, Local Voices, Global Visions. I got the DVD in the mail just before I left for India a few weeks ago, so this was my first chance to see it.

If I could snap my fingers and burn 100,000 DVDs in a flash, I would send a copy of this documentary to every K-12 school in the United States, then snap my fingers some more until they turned raw so schools and youth groups around the world could have a copy as well. This 45-minute documentary, produced entirely by young people, does an astounding job at capturing what's at stake with WSIS, which will have its second summit this November in Tunisia. And it demonstrates the vital role that youth can play in policymaking, whether related to the digital divide or other important policy goals.

The video profiles groups of young people from around the world -- Sierra Leone, Nigeria, India, the Philippines, Canada and Tunisia -- as they organize national youth campaigns to mobilize young people into the WSIS policymaking process. The documentary is broken down into segments, each one profiling youth activists and their work in their home country. We get to know Andrew Benson Greene and his colleagues in IEARN Sierra Leone as they teach their peers to use digital technology and create music as part of their country's post-civil war healing process. In Nigeria, 'Gbenga Sesan leads a national campaign to educate youth about the importance of participating in digital divide policymaking. In India, we meet a young woman who has opened up her home to a local orphanage so she can teach children computer skills. And in Tunisia, we learn about Marouen Mrahi, Rim Nour and their fellow engineering students as they galvanize Tunisian youth to participate in the next WSIS summit, which will take place in their home town of Tunis.

The documentary reaches its climax in Geneva during the first WSIS summit in December 2003. The young people profiled in the video, along with hundreds of other youth activists, organize seminars, participate in summit plenaries, and demonstrate ICT projects to government ministers. The summit is the culmination of more than a year of activities around the world, but it's quite clear that these young people have no plans of wrapping up their activities once they go home. For one thing, they've got another WSIS summit ahead of them in November 2005, but beyond that, you get to see how these young people are laying the groundwork for long-term initiatives to bridge the digital divide in their home countries.

I've met many of the young people profiled in this documentary in person, so it's great getting to see them in the spotlight, but it's not just because I know them personally. (Full disclosure -- TakingITGlobal is a strategic partner of the Digital Divide Network, and I donated some photos from the Geneva summit for the documentary.) Watching them speak, organize local campaigns and take action, I couldn't help but think these young people are truly the leaders of tomorrow. In all seriousness, I wouldn't be at all shocked if one of them - or even more - end up becoming heads of state in their home countries. They have charisma, leadership skills, articulateness and a profound grasp of policy issues. Not only does this video document the role of youth in WSIS, it documents national leaders in the making.

Beyond the amazing people profiled in the video, there's the high production quality as well. TakingITGlobal produced it on a Mac laptop running Final Cut Pro editing software (I note with some pride, as these tools are my own documentary weapons of choice), with all the work done by young people. Twenty-one-year-old Jarra McGrath traveled the world shooting the film, with TakingITGlobal's Nick Moraitis collaborating as co-editor and as narrator. Even the music is produced by youth, most notably the songs recorded by IEARN Sierra Leone. The documentary is a perfect example of how young people can be producers of high-quality content, from video editing to interstitial animations to the Hollywood-quality DVD jewel box packaging.

I do have one complaint, though; the documentary is not available online. If you go to the video's website, there's a short clip, but otherwise only contact information for purchasing copies. That's a real shame -- it would be an enormous public service to make the documentary, or at least more clips, available for noncommercial and educational use.

Otherwise, I can't say enough about this documentary. I am so inspired. It's reinforcing the creative buzz I felt during my recent trip to India, where I produced two documentary shorts on my laptop. My mind is racing with ideas, locations, editing tricks: I'm just dying to get out in the field and make more documentaries now.

But my short-term goal may have backfired. I intended to watch this video to get psyched for my speech later today, yet I may have to scrap my entire presentation for the conference. I'm almost - almost - tempted to shut up and let this documentary do the talking. With Local Voices, Global Visions, the youth of TakingITGlobal articulate the importance of WSIS better than I ever could with just an old-fashioned speech.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 12:59 PM

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Last Night's Boston Digital Divide Meetup

Last night at the Lenox Hotel City Bar in Boston, a group of 14 of us gathered for the official local meetup of the Digital Divide Network. DDN members traveled from as far away as Maine to participate in the informal gathering, which lasted just over 90 minutes.

After everyone introduced themselves, I gave a brief history of DDN, and talked about the potential goals of DDN meetups. I noted that different communities will have varying perspectives and priorities when it comes to bridging the digital divide, so there wouldn't be a specific formula or set of goals that would apply to all local meetups. Having said that, I also said that Boston's DDN meetup group could serve as a model for other groups to be formed around the country, so we should document what we're doing, what works and what doesn't.

The group then discussed what it would like to get out of the experience. Some participants expressed interest in being able to profile local initiatives; others hoped to discuss national and international issues, such as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Rebecca MacKinnon talked about issues such as Internet governance, free expression and online civic journalism, while I discussed using DDN meetups so local communities could host their own digital divide forums during the WSIS summit next November. There also seemed to be a strong overarching interest in building local social networks of individuals and groups working to bridge the digital divide.

I suggested that we try to create a meeting format in which we would begin each meeting with introductions and announcements, then a brief discussion about what's going on online with DDN. This would be followed by a time slot in which a participant would be invited to present a project or facilitate a discussion on a topic of interest. Meetings would close with final thoughts, action items and any next steps for planning future meetups. Some participants also suggested that in between monthly gatherings, individuals could organize special interest group gatherings that might be of interest to a subset of the group.

Wrapping up the meetup, I asked participants to brainstorm potential topics for future meetings, as well as ways to reach out to others in the greater Boston area. We also plan to compile a list of potential meeting sites, either for a regular meetup location or a rotating schedule. Members hoped that locations would have free wifi, though the group was divided as to whether access to beer was a requirement or not. :-)

All in all, I think it was a very successful first meetup. I was only expecting seven or eight people, so the fact we got 14 people was a very positive sign. Hopefully others who attended will share their thoughts about the meeting as well.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 12:50 PM

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March 22, 2005

Local Languages, RSS and the Digital Divide

Susan Mernit recently posted a blog entry about the issue of RSS and its ability to display non-Latinate languages. Susan's blog was in turn inspired by postings on Rebecca MacKinnon's blog about diversity in the blogosphere. Both blogs include a quote from Richard Sambrook of the BBC:

I was speaking to one of our BBC World Service software engineers yesterday who made a point I hadn't appreciated but which potentially has a hugely negative effect on diversity: The issue is RSS does not have a way to display right to left languages correctly and is not very compatible with non Latin languages. I believe it just was not thought about deeply by the people and development effort behind RSS.

This slows down the growth of non Latin RSS adoption. We need to develop multiple language RSS and hopefully redefine standards and approaches.

I've spent a lot of time in the last few years noting the importance of producing local-language content on the Internet. According to various surveys, it's believed that around two-thirds of all Internet content is produced in English, even though English speakers make up less than 10% of the world's population. Some languages, such as Spanish and Chinese, are finally beginning to blossom online, though they still trail behind English, the lingua franca of online discourse.

Unfortunately, there haven't been many global surveys regarding language and Internet content. One important study came from the Barcelona media company Vilaweb in 2001, which found around 68% percent of all websites to be in English. When the study came out, I decided to make a quick chart that compared the number of Web pages found in a given language with the number of people worldwide who spoke that language. Here's what I found. (Again, please not that this data is several years old, so take it with a grain of salt...)

Web Pages and Languages, ranked by the number of speakers per web page:

Language	Web Pages	% of all sites	# of speakers	% of humans	people/web ratio
English	214,250,996	68.39	322,000,000	5.34%	1.5 people/page
Icelandic	136,788	0.04	250,000	.004%	1.83 people/page
Sweden	2,929,241	0.93	9,000,000	.14%	3.07 people/page
Danish	1,374,886	0.44	5,292,000	.085%	3.85 people/page
Norwegian	1,259,189	0.40	5,000,000	.08%	3.86 people/page
Finnish	1,198,956	0.38	6,000,000	.095%	5.00 people/page
German	18,069,744	5.77	98,000,000	1.57%	5.4 people/page
Dutch	3,161,844	1.01	20,000,000	.32%	6.3 people/page
Estonian	173,265	0.06	1,100,000	.018%	6.36 people/page
Japanese	18,335,739	5.85	125,000,000	2.01%	6.8 people/page
Italian	4,883,497	1.56	37,000,000	.59%	7.58 people/page
French	9,262,663	2.96	72,000,000	1.16%	7.77 people/page
Catalan	443,301	0.14	4,353,000	.07%	9.8 people/page
Czech	991,075	0.32	12,000,000	.19%	12.1 people/page
Basque	36,321	0.01	588,000	.0094%	16.19 people/page
Slovenian	134,454	0.04	2,218,000	.036%	16.5 people/page
Korean	4,046,530	1.29	75,000,000	1.21%	18.5 people/page
Latvian	60,959	0.02	1,550,000	.025%	25.4 people/page
Russian	5,900,956	1.88	170,000,000	2.73%	28.8 people/page
Hungarian	498,625	0.16	14,500,000	.23%	29.1 people/page
Portuguese	4,291,237	1.37	170,000,000	2.73%	39.6 people/page
Greek	287,980	0.09	12,000,000	.19%	41.67 people/page
Spanish	7,573,064	2.42	332,000,000	5.34%	43.8 people/page
Lithuanian	82,829	0.03	4,000,000	.064%	48.29 people/page
Polish	848,672	0.27	44,000,000	.71%	51.8 people/page
Hebrew	198,030	0.06	12,000,000	.19%	60.6 people/page
Chinese	12,113,803	3.87	885,000,000	14.2%	73.1 people/page
Turkish	430,996	0.14	59,000,000	.95%	136.9 people/page
Bulgarian	51,336	0.02	9,000,000	.14%	175.3 people/page
Romanian	141,587	0.05	26,000,000	.42%	183.6 people/page
Arabic	127,565	0.04	202,000,000	3.25%	1583.5 people/page

As you can see here, there were about one and a half English speakers for every Web page in English. Interestingly, the next highest ranking came from Iceland; while they're aren't many Icelandic speakers, they've produced a lot of online content, so the ratio of speakers to Web pages is close as well. But compare this to Arabic-language content: there were so few Web pages in Arabic at the time compared to the large population of Arabic speakers, you end up with more than 1,500 people per Arabic Web page. Of course, this data is a few years old, and I'd love to update this chart, but so far I haven't seen a recent study that tabulates the number of pages for each of these languages.

So how of all of this relate to RSS? Well, RSS has become the de-facto way to syndicate content on the Internet. Blogs and news services rely on RSS, as do a growing number of blog consumers. But like the recent Pew study demonstrated, the average blogger is white, well-educated, well-off and English speaking. There's no way we can seriously bridge the digital divide as long as people can't create or access knowledge in their native language. If somehow we managed to bring Internet access to every village in the developing world, it won't mean much if those villagers are stuck using the Net only in English.

Fortunately, the UNICODE project has helped bring local languages to the Internet by providing a universal scheme for displaying tens of thousands of non-Latin characters. This means that I can go to an Israeli newspaper and read it in Hebrew, or an Iranian blog in Farsi. Slowly but surely, language is becoming democratized online, even if the amount of content or readers for a particular language leaves much to be desired.

But what if RSS isn't capable of handling all of these UNICODE languages? Will a Gujarati family in New Jersey be able to read news feeds coming from Gujarati bloggers in India? Honestly, I'm not sure. Technically, it should work: if you take a look at Hoder's blog, written in Farsi (Persian), you can subscribe to his Farsi RSS feed. I don't speak Farsi, but when I tried to subscribe to his feed using Mozilla Thunderbird, I received tons of blog entries, all of which were indeed written in Farsi. So in this particular case, the system apparently works.

But does this apply to all languages supported by UNICODE? Frankly, I have no idea, so I'm hoping some UNICODE techie will jump in and set the record straight. But I certainly hope it can work for all UNICODE-supported languages. Otherwise, we'll see a new facet of the linguistic digital divide. For languages with RSS support, knowledge gets produced and disseminated at a rapid pace, allowing more online knowledge to be produced, and an expanding community of people able to talk about this knowledge and contribute even further to it. But for languages that can't be transmitted via RSS, they'll be stuck sharing content at a much slower pace, to smaller, less-connected audience. Internet users shouldn't be penalized just because their language isn't on a global top 10 list. So let's make sure that people can blog and publish in the language of their choice -- and that their RSS feeds will support them, 100 percent. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 2:29 PM | Comments (2)

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March 20, 2005

Boston Digital Divide Meetup this Wednesday

This Wednesday, I'll host a meetup for people interested in the digital divide in Boston. The meeting is officially a gathering of members of the Digital Divide Network, but we're not picky - anyone who's interested in the digital divide is more than welcome to attend. We'll meet at the Lenox Hotel City Bar at 5pm on Wednesday, March 23; the bar is located at the corner of Boylston and Exeter, right by Copley Place. If you'd like to join us, please RSVP on our Meetup page. Hope to see you Wednesday! -andy

Posted by acarvin at 2:50 PM

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March 15, 2005

Technology Review's Special Issue on World Changing Ideas

The latest issue of MIT Technology Review magazine focuses on world changing ideas -- innovative approaches to ICTs, R&D, and high tech in general from different parts of the world.

They profile tech trends in around half a dozen countries. Amongst the most interesting are the articles on Brazil, which includes information CDI's telecentre work and other digital divide projects, and South Africa, which covers R&D, local language content and open source.

Meanwhile, the issue includes a series of world maps that identify each country as high, medium or low in a range of metrics related to ICTs and the digital divide. Here are the maps:

Since the maps don't have a text version, I've taken the liberty of typing up the top five rankings of the most relevant maps.

Top R&D spending as a percentage of GDP
1. Israel
2. Sweden
3. Finland
4. Japan
5. Iceland

Top ICT spending per capita
1. US
2. Switzerland
3. Mexico
4. Denmark
5. Sweden

Most Mobile Phone Users per 1000 People
1. Luxembourg
2. Israel
3. Italy
4. Iceland
5. Sweden

Internet Use Per 1000 people
1. Sweden
2. South Korea
3. US
4. Canada
5. Denmark

Highest Cost of Internet Access
1. Central African Republic
2. Sudan
3. Haiti
4. Gabon
5. Republic of the Congo

Personally, I wish the maps weren't divided into rather vague rankings (how "high" is high? What does "low" mean?), but they still make for interesting representations on the relative state of ICTs around the world.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 1:56 PM

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March 14, 2005

Introducing DDN Friends

We've just added a new feature to the Digital Divide Network website called DDN Friends. The idea behind this feature is to allow DDN members to identify friends and colleagues on the network and list them on your personal profile page. For example, if you go to my personal profile page, you'll see a list of several friends I've added to my list. This list appears below my bio, in the right column below my list of favorite websites.

When you're logged into the website and click on anyone's personal profile, you'll now see a link at the top right of the page that says "Add as Friend." Click on that link, and the person will be added to your list of friends, which you can review and manage by going to your About Me page in the edit profile section of the site. If you want to list your friends on your public profile page, you'll have to go to the About Me edit page listed above and click the box that says "Public friends." This will make your list public.

In future upgrades to the site, we may add other features to this tool, but for now it's a simple, handy way to list friends and colleagues on your personal profile page and build your social network on DDN. If you're a DDN member, you can get started right now; if you're not, please join us. Give it a try and let me know what you think... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 9:03 AM

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March 13, 2005

Quoted in AP Story on Creating a $100 Laptop

There's a new AP story called MIT team bringing $100 laptops to developing world in which I'm quoted. The article explores a new project by Nicholas Negroponte at the MIT Media Lab to create a $100 laptop for use in the developing world.

Andy Carvin, director of the Newton-based nonprofit Digital Divide Network, applauds the project's goals, calling an extremely low-cost, durable laptop "one of the holy grails of bridging the digital divide."

But he said increasingly sophisticated and versatile wireless handhelds like high-end "smart" cell phones and Blackberry devices may gain favor over laptops as the developing world's online tools of choice.

"That's not to suggest we should not have an inexpensive laptop," Carvin said. "They're parallel tracks, and it's probably a healthy competition to have both."

Anyway, check it out when you get a chance.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 7:30 PM

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March 4, 2005

Pondering a Quote for the World Bank

I just saw this quote in the report book distributed here at the Baramati conference:

"We must work towards the day when through the Internet, through distance learning, through cellular phones and wind-up radios, the village elder or the aspiring student will have access to the same information as the finance minister. Communications technology gives us the tool for true participation. This is leveling the playing field. This is real equity."

-World Bank President James Wolfensohn, Prague Annual Meetings, September 2000

I wonder if the Reuters reporter who produced the story last week saying that the World Bank believes the digital divide is being bridged "rapidly" and that we shouldn't worry about the issue so much would reconsider his story based on this statement. Because if this situation hasn't been realized, then the digital divide is nowhere close to being bridged. -ac

Posted by acarvin at 7:16 AM

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Using ICTs to Reach Human Development Goals

The first full day of the fifth Baramati Conference in Baramati, India opened this morning with a speech delivered by India's ICT minister, Shri Dayanidhi Maran.

"ICT as a catalyst for development is a focus of my ministry," Minister Maran explained. "I firmly believe ICT can deliver on the promise of bringing education to all.... The role of ICT for education and development is now widely accepted worldwide... including as a tool for reaching the Millennium Development Goals.... ICT is expected to play an important role in achieving these targets."

"Technologies such as ICT can help people reach their full potential," he continued. "There are hundreds of millions of people not in a position to benefit from these tools... How can we use ICT to help the poor? It is my very earnest desire that the benefits of ICT percolate down to the poor... using ICT to reach human development goals."

"Nations are placing great emphasis on developing their human capital," he continued. So the question, he said, is how can ICTs be used to raise the opportunities available to the underprivileged.

"The use of ICT to help people gain access to the information they require to improve their lives.... It is our way of escaping from our closed society. Female education is recognized as one of the key factors for promoting social development. It is often said that when you educate a woman, you educate a whole family." He went on to describe the success of the Grameen Phone program for giving new economic opportunities to illiterate women.

"We should prepare our children for an increasingly digital world" by providing universal access to ICTs, he explained. ICTs will help children gain new skills and build confidence.

"It is our vision to make India a major player in the ICT arena," Minister Maran concluded.

Posted by acarvin at 12:43 AM

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March 1, 2005

Article about the Baramati Conference

I just found an article about the conference I will be attending later this week. It looks like there will be some very distinguished Indian VIPs there. Meanwhile, here's the homepage of the conference. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 4:31 AM

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February 27, 2005

Announcing Digital Divide Meetups

Hi everyone,

I've got some exciting news... Some of you may remember the podcast I posted a couple of weeks ago when the Digital Divide Network (DDN) hosted an informal meetup in Boston during the LinuxWorld conference. It wasn't a real "meetup" in the sense that we didn't use the website meetup.com to organize it, but it was in spirit of that website, which helps people organize meetings with like-minded people in their local community.

As it turns out, the podcast caught the attention of the people who run meetup.com, and they contacted me to say hello. In our conversations I mentioned to them that Meetup.com didn't have an easy way to organize local community gatherings specifically around the digital divide, as "digital divide" wasn't one of the topics they had categorized on their site. Within a few hours, that problem was solved, as Meetup.com has set up a digital divide community just for us:

http://ddn.meetup.com

Effective immediately, anyone who is interested in organizing a community gathering to discuss the digital divide now has a free tool to do this. When you register with the site, you'll be able to organize your own digital divide meetup in your town; then anyone who is interested in discussing the digital divide can come and join you. The site even has a notification system that will email you when someone has organized a digital divide-related meetup in your community.

I can see this service being used by us a couple of ways. First, it allows any of us to organize our own community meetings to discuss the digital divide, whenever you want -- your library, a coffee shop. the neighborhood church. So if you just want to do it once, or if you want to make it a monthly event, it's up to you. And now that "digital divide" has been added to the list of topics for Meetup, other Meetup members who have no experience with DDN can still find out about your meeting and participate.

Second, while this may be wishful thinking, I could see us organizing simultaneous DDN meetings all over the world. For example, let's say we decide to make June 1 International DDN Day; DDN volunteers would then organize local meetings to discuss the digital divide, all for that same day. Members would be encourged to make podcasts, video clips, take notes, etc, then share their experiences on the list and on the DDN website. Just yesterday we were talking on the list about why there should be WSIS-related meetings in real communities rather than places like Geneva. So who's to say that in the third week of November of this year, communities all over the world organize their own WSIS mini-summits to discuss the digital divide locally?

So for those of you who have thought about organizing or participating in local meetings to discuss the digital divide, I encourage you to go to ddn.meetup.com and organize a meeting. I think it could be a powerful way of adding new depth and real-world action to the Digital Divide Network.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 11:57 AM

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February 25, 2005

World Bank Says Digital Divide Narrowing Rapidly; Pigs Seen Flying Over Geneva

So it seems there's a Reuters story circulating the wires about a new World Bank report suggesting that the digital divide is being bridged rapidly worldwide.

"The digital divide is rapidly closing," the report said. "People in the developing world are getting more access at an incredible rate -- far faster than they got access to new technologies in the past." It goes on to say that half the world's population now has access to a fixed-line telephone, and 77% to a mobile network -- surpassing a WSIS
campaign goal that calls for 50 percent access by 2015.

I haven't read the full report -- oddly, it's not on the World Bank website at the time I'm writing this -- but it seems to equate bridging the digital divide with the spread of telephony, which strikes me as very misguided. Unless all of those mobiles are offering Internet access, then they're not addressing the issue of ubiquitous Internet access, not to mention universal literacy and local language content needs, which in my mind are pre-requisites to bridging the digital divide.

Saying that the digital divide is being bridged rapidly makes no sense when many countries still have Internet penetration rates of less than one percent. And it does a huge disservice to policymaking and public understanding of the issue, because it suggests the job is done, let's not worry about it, and takes pressure off all these policymakers here in Geneva who are debating how to finance bridging the digital divide. I mean, if I were a policymaker or a donor under political pressure to pick my spending priorities carefully and the World Bank just told be the digital divide is becoming a non-issue, do you think I might put my resources elsewhere? It's already happened in the US thanks to overly rosy government reports on the digital divide, and the American digital divide isn't as severe as the international one, so the impact internationally could be devastating if policymakers start ignoring the issue... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 3:23 AM

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February 22, 2005

Podcast: Grassroots Indian Women Speak Out

I've just recorded a new podcast called Grassroots Indian Women Speak Out. It's a 10-minute interview with four women from rural India who were invited to participate in the WSIS process by OneWorld South Asia. They discuss the importance of women and linguistic minorities in the WSIS process, and advocate a grass-roots campaign in which rural women from across the South would be invited to participate in WSIS. Special thanks to Geeta Sharma of OneWorld for providing translation.... -ac

ps- I will try to write a transcript of the podcast later; right now I need to help draft language for the education caucus....

Posted by acarvin at 7:13 AM

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February 19, 2005

Steve Garfield's Berkman Video Blog

Video blogger extraordinaire Steve Garfield has put together a 10-minute Web video covering last Thursday's Berkman bloggers meeting at Harvard. A production crew from ABC's Nightline was filming the meeting as well, so it was a sizable crowd, not to mention a lively one. We discussed blogging and journalistic standards for the better part of the meeting. Several Digital Divide Network members took part in the meeting, including Rebecca MacKinnon, Taran Rampersad, Doc Searls, Cedar Pruitt and myself. Check it out if you get a chance... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 11:33 AM

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February 18, 2005

Celebrating Black Family Technology Awareness Week

In case you didn't know, it's Black Family Technology Awareness Week. The National Urban League and other groups around the country are organizing local events to encourage African American families to learn more about the Internet and other technologies. I got quoted in an AP wire story about the event. -ac

Posted by acarvin at 9:25 AM

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February 17, 2005

The Philadelphia Story, Part 2

More coverage of Philadelphia's plans to connect the city with municipal wireless Internet in today's New York Times. Here's a snippet:

If Mayor John F. Street has his way, by next year this 135-square-mile metropolis will become one gigantic wireless hot spot, offering every neighborhood high-speed access to the Web at below-market prices in what would be the largest experiment in municipal Internet service in the country.

City officials envision a seamless mesh of broadband signals that will enable the police to download mug shots as they race to crime scenes in their patrol cars, allow truck drivers to maintain Internet access to inventories as they roam the city, and perhaps most important, let students and low-income residents get on the net.

Experts say the Philadelphia model, if successful, could provide the tipping point for a nationwide movement to make broadband affordable and accessible in every municipality. From tiny St. Francis, Kan., to tech-savvy San Francisco, more than 50 local governments have already installed or are on the verge of creating municipal broadband systems for the public.

But Philadelphia's plan has prompted a debate over who should provide the service, and whether government should compete with private industry, particularly in hard-to-reach rural areas or low-income urban communities. Telecommunications and cable companies say that municipal Internet networks will not only inhibit private enterprise, but also result in poor service and wasted tax dollars. They have mounted major lobbying campaigns in several states to restrict or prohibit municipalities from establishing their own networks.

"This is a growing trend, but an ominous and disturbing one," said Adam Thierer, director of telecommunications studies at the libertarian Cato Institute and the author of a soon-to-be-released study criticizing the Philadelphia plan. "The last thing I'd want to see is broadband turned into a lazy public utility."

It's good to see this debate being aired in the mainstram media. DDN recently posted an article on this issue that might also be of interest... -ac

Posted by acarvin at 2:33 PM

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The Latino Digital Divide

The bilingual Missouri magazine Adelante has a cover story in which they interviewed me about the Latino digital divide. The article is also available in Spanish. "So many institutions within our world - business, education, politics, etc. - take it for granted that the public has Internet access. Students are given Internet-related homework, potential employees are expected to be Internet literate," they quote. "People on the wrong side of the digital divide have one arm tied around their back because they lack access to tools that can further their education, their career, their family's health and well-being." -ac

Posted by acarvin at 12:12 PM

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Municipal Wi-Fi=Big Dig?

Philadelphia city councilman Frank Rizzo has an editorial in CNET today criticizing the proposal to create a municipal wi-fi network for the city, comparing it to Boston's notorious Big Dig project. Instead, he proposes that the federal Universal Service Fund be reformed to foster ubiquitous broadband availability.

Some nuggets from Rizzo's essay:

Today, many city administrators seem ... romanced by the apparent luster of municipal wireless or "Wi-Fi" networks. To be sure, these local city government officials, like those in the case of Boston's Big Dig, are well intentioned. They argue, in essence, that new advances in wireless technology enable municipal governments to construct low-cost Wi-Fi "hot spots" enabling those with expensive laptops to get wireless broadband signals in a radius of 300 feet from a municipal router. Admirably, they see themselves as pioneers, building the bridge over the digital divide.

For just less than $11 million dollars, says Philadelphia Chief Information Officer Dianah Neff, the residents of the 135-square-mile city of Philadelphia could receive broadband anywhere. But on closer look, it may be that Ms. Neff--and hundreds of other municipal officials throughout the country--are creating the potential for their own Big Dig....

...For my part, I share the bipartisan goal of bringing universal broadband to every American household that wants it by 2007. A more sensible, cost-efficient and less risky policy would be to adopt a national plan for reforming the Universal Service Fund.

Rather than subsidizing old-school narrow-band technologies with fees imposed on all carriers, we should modernize our policy to ensure universal and affordable broadband with a host of marketplace incentives and by promoting competition among carriers. Countries such as Japan and South Korea have shown remarkable success in promoting universal access to broadband by promoting competition rather than by having government attempt to take control of the market.

We should also ensure that underserved communities get access to needed computer hardware. Philadelphia could start with a more sensible and achievable objective of placing hotspots in libraries and other public buildings, while creating a public-private partnership dedicated to providing, through tax deductible donations or otherwise, computer hardware where it's needed.

A national broadband policy, backed up by municipal governments with sensible, affordable policies would dramatically boost our economy and our literacy without putting vulnerable municipal budgets at dire risk in a Don Quixote-like search for the broadband cure.

Posted by acarvin at 11:08 AM

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January 4, 2005

Podcast: The Tsunami as a Wake-Up Call to Bridging the Digital Divide

I've just posted a new podcast: The Tsunami as a Wake-Up Call to Bridging the Digital Divide. It's based on an article of the same name that I published today on the Digital Divide Network. Give it a listen (or a read) when you have a chance.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 10:01 PM

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The Tsunami as a Wake-Up Call to Bridging the Digital Divide

I've just written an essay called The Tsunami as a Wake-Up Call to Bridging the Digital Divide. The full text is available on th Digital Divide Network website. Here's a snippet from the introduction:

As everyone knows by now, the last week and a half has been a trying time for the people of South Asia. Tens of thousands of people are dead, millions of lives ruined. Being thousands of miles away from the epicenters of destruction, it's sometimes hard for me to fathom the scale of how awful things are.

It's times like this I step back and begin to wonder about the work I do on bridging the digital divide. Sometimes I ask myself, does any of this really matter? Is bridging the digital divide really that important when compared to rebuilding the lives of millions of people, let alone protecting them in the first place?

But as we learn more about why some people survived and others didn't, it's made me realize that bridging the digital divide is more important than ever. Bridging the divide -- particularly in terms of promoting technology literacy and e-government for all -- could have actually saved lives.

One of the first stories to hit home for me was that of Mr. Vijaykumar, a former volunteer at a telecenter in Nallavadu, India, run by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. Vijaykumar, who's now living in Singapore, received word of the tsunami well before anyone in southern India did. He called his family in Nallavadu, then called the telecenter. Another telecenter volunteer living abroad, Mr. Gopu, did the same thing. Immediately the community sprung into action. Using the telecenter's public address system, local volunteers alerted fellow villagers. Among the 500 families in Nallavadu, 150 of their houses were destroyed -- yet no one died, because the telecenter responded to the imminent crisis at a time when no other local or national warning system was in place....

For the rest of the article, please check out DDN.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 8:02 PM

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December 29, 2004

DDN, LearningTimes Launch Online Community for Tsunami Relief Efforts

In response to this week's devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean, I've created an online community workspace on disaster relief and emergency preparedness.

This virtual community can be used for posting online resources, documents, news, and articles about tsunami relief efforts. Users also may take advantage of the site's Web bulletin board and post their own blog entries. For the time being the space will focus on tsunami-related relief efforts; in the long haul we hope the space can be used for discussing the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in emergency preparedness and disaster relief.

Additionally, LearningTimes has generously donated an e-conference tool to aid coordination and discussion of local relief efforts. This means users with a microphone and speakers connected to their computer will be able to talk to each other over the Internet, or host their own virtual meetings and webcasts. I'm hoping NGOs will use the e-conference tool to help coordinate their efforts, as well as for tsunami survivors to share their stories.

To introduce users to the website and the e-conferencing tool, we will host a live webcast twice on Thursday, December 30. The first webcast will take place at 7am ET (12:00 GMT) to accomodate users in Asia and Europe, while the second webcast will occur at 12pm ET (17:00 GMT) to accomodate North American participants. Both webcasts will be conducted in English, while recordings will be archived for future online listening and podcasting.

To participate in the live webcast, please visit our e-conferencing tool. Next, type in your name; the e-conferencing tool will then be downloaded to your computer and log you into the webcast. We recommend you do this at least 15 minutes prior to joining the virtual tour. You may also log on now if you would like to experiment with the e-conferencing tool, as it is being made available 24 hours a day.

This new DDN community is free and open to the public, but participants must first join the Digital Divide Network website in order to post content or chat on the bulletin board. If you're not already a member of DDN, please create an account.

Once you're registered and logged in to the website, please visit the community's homepage and click on the button in the center column that says "Join this community." This will give you posting privileges and allow you to participate in the bulletin board discussions.

We are just beginning to post content to the site, so by the time you read this email there should be several tsunami-related resources published already. Meanwhile, you are invited to join DDN, log in and post your own resources and content to share with colleagues around the world. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 10:13 PM

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December 23, 2004

Making Podcasting Accessible to All

Drumroll, please: I've just posted my first podcast. The topic of this five-minute audio is the growth of podcasting and the subsequent accessibility challenges faced by the hearing impaired. I'm hoping it's the first in a series of podcasts from me on a variety of issues related to the Internet, the media and the digital divide, among other topics.

If you have a good Internet connection you can download the podcast; it's just over five megabytes in size. Otherwise, a transcript of the podcast can be found below.

For those of you who want to subscribe to my future podcasts using software like iPodderX, please use my blog's RSS feed.

-ac

---

Hi everyone, Andy Carvin here.... Welcome to the first official podcast for my blog, Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth. I'll be posting occasional podcasts on a variety of issues. I don't plan on having a single theme to this podcast; it won't strictly be about the digital divide or Internet culture or travel or the media. There really aren't rules for this; I'm just going to play it by ear and see where the muses lead me.

Today, though, I'd like to talk about podcasting. No, I don't mean for this to be yet another podcast about podcasts. Instead, I want to talk specifically about podcasting and accessibility.

This past week on the Digital Divide Network email list there was a great discussion about the advent of podcasting and its potential as a tool for giving a voice to disenfranchised communities.

A few days into the conversation, Grant Laird of the Texas Deaf Network posted a brief response to the thread. He said,"Don't forget that podcasting probably doesn't support transcripts for the deaf community."

My first reaction was, "That's a fair point.... I'm more than happy to post transcripts of my podcasts." For me, at least, that makes a lot of sense. But will other podcasters feel the same way? Unfortunately, I think the answer is generally no, I think many would argue that the whole notion of posting podcast transcripts actually runs counter to the ethos of podcasting.

A case in point: last month, Web accessibility activist Matt May posted a rather provocative essay in which he lamented that many pioneering podcasters are actually going out their way not to transcribe their podcasts. As evidence to this, he cited a statement by Steve Gillmor at the recent BloggerCon conference saying that he'd never post transcripts -- and actually got applause out of it.

Posting transcripts, it seems, would defeat the whole purpose of podcasting: pushing the envelop of personal multimedia publishing. I mean, why bother spend all of this time trying to be a bleeding-edge Internet radio pioneer when you'd have to type up everything you've just said, just so that people who don't even know what an iPod is can read what you had to say in the first place?

But Matt May, who works for the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative, finds this position unacceptable. He writes:

What if a deaf user sees a topic that interests him or her, and wants to know what these subject-matter experts have to say about it? Should he or she go without simply because the moderator thinks it would disrupt the natural feel found in the panel's voices?

Interestingly, not long after Matt posted his blog, Steve Gillmor posted a response:

I have to admit I was not thinking about accessibility in relation to the subject of transcripts. Of course it makes sense in that context, and I appreciate your perception that the Gillmor Gang material is worthy of that additional effort.... As the network grows and technologies for auto-transcriptions become affordable without the cost of training that holds back current technology, the accessibility problem will be overcome.

These comments by Matt and Grant and Steve are probably the first round of what may be a rather contentious battle between podcasters and accessibility activists. Just as we've seen fights over the accessibility of websites and streaming media, it's no surprise that podcasting has opened a new theatre of operations in this battle. But fortunately podcasters like Steve Gillmor are now thinking about accessibility, and are open to addressing these concerns. Will others take notice? I imagine many won't, but I'm sure the accessibility community won't sit on their hands either.</