The History Librarian

I’m currently living out the great American dream: a cross-country road trip. I was going to go through Colorado/Utah heading up to Oregon via the northern route, but the latest installment of Winter Weather meant I had to travel further south and take I-40 west. Tonight, I’m just outside of Oklahoma City.

Last night, my first on the road, I was in Tennessee and couldn’t sleep so I sat up watching TV, including Charlie Rose. He was interviewing Craig Barrett, Chairman of Intel. It was generally interesting – it’s always fun to learn more about the tech industry – but I was struck (perhaps for no real reason) by the discussion of the digital divide. Barrett noted that there were four parts to closing the divide:

• increase access by decreasing the cost of PCs
• improve connectivity and make it broadband (he talked about broadband towers in India and how he felt that dial-up was not sufficient access)
• content has to be localized – local languages but also content that is interesting to local groups
• education – people need to be trained to use computers effectively (and provide localized content; my note: education also is what allows people to create content rather than be provided with content)

Barrett then talked about his work with the United Nations, noting that the three central content areas (for global ICT development) are health, education, and economic development.

Nothing deep here, but I had fleeting, late-night thoughts about the relevance for OA of Barrett’s digital divide discussion.