3. DIGITAL DIVIDE: NOT JUST 3RD WORLD
Definition: The gap between those who have
access to or who can benefit from technology
and those who cannot
Examples:
US: Rural/Urban broadband access
US: “poor” / “rich” (access)
English v “everything else”
Half of the world’s population has never made a
telephone call (ITU)
Internet indicators by country (pdf)
5. 1 IN 5 HOUSEHOLDS WORLDWIDE
HAVE BROADBAND INTERNET
ACCESS, GARTNER
2008 – 382 million households
2009 – 422 million households
2013 – 580 million households
6. ACCESS AND ACCESSIBILITY (1/2)
There’s “access” and then there’s
“accessibility”
Do we have access to a technology?
Does the technology allow everyone access
(accessibility)?
Whose responsibility is it to help make the
internet more accessible to all?
Government, Industry, us?
7. ACCESS AND ACCESSIBILITY (2/2)
Network neutrality is hot “access” topic
Feb 2006: AOL and Yahoo proposed fee to ensure
e-mail delivery (IHT, 6 Feb 2006)
$0.025 to $0.01 per e-mail
Would not be subject to existing user spam filters
A benefit for businesses (Ascribe, 2 Feb 2006)
AT&T and others proposed “access-tiering” (two-
tier Internet) (Red Herring, 31 Jan 2006)
Prioritize packets? Streaming video is the rationale
8. NET NEUTRALITY
There is something wrong with network owners saying
“we’ll guarantee fast video service from NBC on your
broadband account.” And there is something especially
wrong with network owners telling content or service
providers that they can’t access a meaningful
broadband network unless they pay an access tax.
I don’t mean “wrong” in the sense of immoral, or even
unfair. My argument is not about the social justice of
Internet access. I mean “wrong” in the sense that such a
policy will inevitably weaken application competition on
the Internet, and that in turn will weaken Internet
growth.
Testimony, Lawrence Lessig, Stanford, Senate Commerce, Science and
Transportation Committee, 7 February 2006
9. CONNECTIVITY
Statistics are, to put it mildly, squishy
2006: Canada led the G7 group of
industrialized countries in broadband
penetration (OECD); US was 16th (ITU)
2008: US ranked 19th
in speed (OECD)
See
http://wiredpen.com/2010/02/23/fcc-issues-new-broa
10. US IS NOT WORLD TECH LEADER
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman,
Aug 2005: (tongue-in-check) considering a run for
President, promised that after four years, our cell
phone service would be at least as good as
Ghana's, and if elected for a second term, as good
as Japan’s.
11. WHAT SPEEDS MEAN
Cable
Basic: 4 Mbps to 6 Mbps
High End: 12 Mbps to 16 Mbps and faster
DSL
Basic: 768 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps
High End: 3 Mbps to 7 Mbps
Fiber Optic Cable: 15Mbps – 25 Mbps
Mobile
EDGE Up to 58Kbps, average 22Kbps
Mobile – 3G AT&T: Download, 700-1.7 Mbps; Upload, 500 Kbps – 1.2
MbpSprint: Download, 600Kbps – 1.4 MbpsVerizon: 600 Kbps to
1.4Mbps
Mobile – 4G Download: 3-6 Mbps
Satellite: 10 – 20kbps
WiMax (like Clear): Download: 3-6 Mbps
South Korea 1 Gbps (2012)
Japan Average advertised: 93.6 Mbps (2007)
France Average advertised: 44.1 Mbps (2007)
14. FCC GOAL (MARCH 2010)
By 2020, to connect 100 million U.S. households
(~85 percent) to 100 Mbps high speed broadband
Compare:
Australia: 100 Mpbs to 90 percent households by
2018 (two years and ~5 percent ahead of U.S. plan)
Finland: 100 Mbps in every household by 2016 (four
years and ~15 percent ahead of the U.S. plan
Singapore: next generation Internet to all households
by 2013 (seven years and ~15 percent ahead of U.S.
plan
South Korea: 1 Gbps by 2014 (six years and an order
of magnitude ahead of U.S. plan)
17. PUBLIC SPACE: FORM OF ACCESS
“From the time that humans first defined
private spaces, public spaces have served as
places where people have come together to
exchange ideas. From the ancient Greek's
Agora to the Middle Ages' Commons to early
20th century American urban streets and
parks, public spaces have been centers for
free speech and public discourse.”
Howard Besser, UCLA, 2001
18. PUBLIC SPACE AND FREE SPEECH
“[T]he First Amendment affords the public
access to discussion, debate, and the
dissemination of information and ideas... the
right to receive information is an inherent
corollary of the rights of free speech and
press that are explicitly guaranteed by the
Constitution... the right to receive ideas is a
necessary predicate to the recipient's
meaningful exercise of his own rights of
speech, press, and political freedom."
Supreme Court, 1978, First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti
19. PUBLIC SPACE IS IMPORTANT
Public space provides the potential for the
gathering of people who might not otherwise
come in contact with one another in their daily
lives. In this way public space is crucial to the
public sphere (Jacobs, 1999)
In public space, action gains publicity because
it is visible to the public (Mattson, 1999;
Putnam, 2000)
Cyberspace has been called a surrogate public
space (Gumpert & Drucker, 1992, 1998) or the
"electronic agora" (Rheingold 1993, 14).
20. PUBLIC SPACE NURTURES
DIVERSITY
Open to everyone
No monetary barrier, no physical barrier (ADA), no
“color” barrier (desegregation)
Examples: city streets, parks, public
transportation, public buildings
Others?
21. PSEUDO PUBLIC SPACE
Shopping malls, sports stadiums
Private spaces
Can control speech
Can control access
Facebook? Twitter? MySpace?
22. AIRWAVES AS PUBLIC SPACE
Radio and TV licenses predicated on broadcasting that
serves the “public interest”
Public Radio and TV (PBS)
What happens if “everyone” watches “cableTV,” a
private space?
How might “internet TV” provide another pseudo
commons?
23. “PUBLIC SPACE” IN CYBERSPACE
Public (free) WiFi in the US
Spokane
New York Parks, Google in NY/SF
Coffee shops in Seattle
Free WiFi Directory
By providing free WiFi, do you think that we are
intensifying a constant need for news, info and
entertainment? Why or why not? When you use
wireless networks, do you feel safe or do you have
reservations about security?
25. SUMMARY
Access is only part of the DD story
Although most of the DD story is outside our
borders, it’s not just outside our border
Access also means public space
Public space is important, changing
Network TV -> Cable TV -> ipTV
Rise of pseudo public space
Efforts to foster public space in cyberspace
include community networks and publicly
accessible WiFi
26. CREDITS
Kathy E Gill, @kegill or kegill@uw.edu
Creative Commons License: attribution, non-
commercial, share-and-share-alike
Gartner report stated that 1 in 5 households worldwide will have a fixed broadband connection by the end of this year. Which means 422 million households will have broadband by the end of this year, compared to 382 million in 2008, and it is likely that the this trend will grow to 580 million by 2013.
Source: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1189323
Driven by AT&T and Viacom – see comments on keeping wireless “unregulated”
http://internetinnovation.org/
Common Cause: http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=1498631
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/sites.html
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_3/dahlberg/
http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1994/aug/literacy.html
The virtual community
http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html
http://www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/writings/democ.html