Access for Everyone?
Some of us don’t actually possess phones with internet access or pushed email.
For the vast majority of people on this planet, acquiring the latest gadget is still out of reach due to costs. Until my brief tenure in advertising a couple of years ago, as much as I may have wanted a PDA (as they were once known), I couldn’t afford one and was therefore separated from an entire movement that has now transformed how we, as a global community, communicate and live. After my layoff from said job as corporate hustler last year, I had to relinquish my beloved Crackberry and went back to utilizing my very basic and entirely acceptable Tracphone. It wasn’t such a tragedy, but with the evolution of smartphones, I couldn’t help but feel out of the loop.
Anyone that’s involved in any shape or form in the digital world recognizes the strides that smartphones, web apps, and internet innovation are taking. What is new today will be old news within a matter weeks. In places such as India or the many countries of Africa, people are using their phones for far more than just email or bullshit web games—they pay for groceries with a swipe of the phone, for example. We use these applications to share moments, conversations, photos, data, and more. Organization of higher education often takes place only via online portals—from applying to school to registering for classes to turning in exams. Many people are only available through the online world.
Once upon a time, knowledge equaled power. Now, it is the access to knowledge that equals power. So what happens to those that don’t have the financial means to acquire that access? Are we left behind and looked upon in the same manner that the homeless or Dalit are? Throwaways? I recently invested in a Crackberry again and while it’s not the latest model, it opened up that world again for me. How do we do this for the people for whom the costs remains beyond their means? If technology is the framework of the world, how do we make it accessible to everyone?
