Connecting The Dots: Media

My portion of our dot comes from the digital divide and the media. Stanford students define the digital divide as;

 Interaction between human and computers has greatly increased as we embark on the twenty-first century. The ability to access computers and the internet has become increasingly important to completely immerse oneself in the economic, political, and social aspects of not just America, but of the world. However, not everyone has access to this technology. The idea of the "digital divide" refers to the growing gap between the underprivileged members of society, especially the poor, rural, elderly, and handicapped portion of the population who do not have access to computers or the internet; and the wealthy, middle-class, and young Americans living in urban and suburban areas who have access.("The Digital Divide", n.d)

The following diagrams come from Lee Rainie, who conducted a study with PewReasearch Centers  on the digital divide:
 

With this divide growing with each new piece of technology it's unfortunate but common that several are unable to keep up with the changes or even understand all of them. Mathew Ingram states from our dot article;

In a world of connected devices and always-on networks, everyone is now a member of the media. While the full ramifications of this are still becoming clear, they have already been profound: Social-media tools that allow anyone to become a publisher have created a democracy of distribution that has torn down the barriers between the media and everyday life. (Ingram, 2011).

This idea tied in with the idea of the digital divide shows how quickly that divide can spread. With constant contact to media through the use of smart phones, information is constantly updated and spread rapidly. A person about be disconnected for half a day and miss several stories, leaving them out of the loop already. Let alone if a person relies on a newspaper for information. With so much information, and everyone having the ability to be a journalist it is hard to keep up. Leading into another dilemma in which we begin to forfeit the time to really delve into an idea, choosing rather to spread ourselves thin. While our generation reads more than others, we seem to know about several topics, but only on a surface level. Never taking time to really understand or dig deeper into an idea before moving to the next story.


References:

Digital divide - Google Search. (n.d.). Retrieved February 3, 2015, from https://www.google.com/search?q=digital divide&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

 Ingram, M. (2011, November 1). How connectivity is revolutionizing everything. Retrieved February 3, 2015, from https://gigaom.com/2011/11/01/how-connectivity-is-revolutionizing-everything/6/

 Rainie, L. (2013, November 4). The State of Digital Divides (video & slides). Retrieved February 3, 2015, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/11/05/the-state-of-digital-divides-video-slides/