Commentary from the liberterrain…
When people start complaining about "the digital divide" you know they're running out of things to complain about.
The digital divide simply means that people with higher incomes have internet access while people of lower means don't.
The online Dallas South News, "a nonprofit news organization utilizing technology, social media, and journalistic principles to empower and inform underserved communities," posted an "infographic" on their website explaining how this divide is "creating a deeper social divide."
(Keep in mind that "underserved" is used by people who expect to be "served" by others but they're just not getting as much "service" as they think they're entitled to. "Infographic" refers to modern pictograms, heavy on visuals and light on words.)
The article tells us that children learn best through online classes but 100,000,000 US households lack broadband access; 46% "of the poorest households" don't own a computer; minorities have lower rates of internet access than whites; more than twice as many rural households use dial-up access than urban households; and emerging technologies are more expensive in the US than abroad.
But this social divide has always been true everywhere. At one point only the rich had automobiles, telephones, washing machines, television sets and digital watches.
The first digital watch cost $2,000. Today they're so cheap they're throwaways. Young people don't even wear watches because the time is displayed on their smart phones, so cheap today that many "poor" people have them.
Prices were driven down through competition in what remains of the libertarian free market in America's corrupted corporatist/statist catastrophe.
Yet the Dallas South News insists the solution is that this same anti-freedom corporatist/statist monster that eats its most productive and innovative people must swallow up ever more taxpayer income so the FCC can build a "desperately needed" "National Broadband Plan."
To keep things in perspective, the people typically called "poor" in America have a roof over their heads that includes electricity, running water for toilets and bathtubs, and have refrigerators and stoves. Many own TVs and cars. People typically called "poor" throughout the rest of the world have none of these things.
But here's the most curious aspect of the whole article. If the people of South Dallas are underserved due to lack of internet access, the Dallas South News, being an internet publication, is itself failing to serve the very people they define as underserved.
Don't miss a DALLAS LIBERTARIAN EXAMINER article: Subscribeto my email alerts and then have fun hitting all those other social media buttons too.
North Texas Libertarians! Send me stories, photos, videos for publication in the Dallas Libertarian Examiner: libergarryan@aol.com.
Read more Reed: national news and commentary at Libertarian News Examiner.
Also twiddling with Twitter and fiddling with Facebook.
Now posting in Posterous as Libertarian Opinionizer
Comments