Bridging The Digital Divide

Information Rich, Information Poor - Digital divide

At the beginning of the last century, the brilliant Indian mathematician Ramanujan showed by example that great riches can come from coupling an individual's innate talent - his was a truly remarkable one - with a small tool set. In his case, it took a single volume: G.S. Carr's Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure Mathematics. Using the book, the young Ramanujan taught himself math and by the time he was 19, he had already begun to do groundbreaking work in number theory.

Today, we can do much the same thing for children by giving them their own simple tool: a laptop. Laptop will not only be something to own and feel empowered by, it will also be portable and a tool for collaboration. Students will be able to access thousands of textbooks electronically and learn how to program, one of the best ways to "learn how to learn". And when students attach cameras, microphones, and printers, the basic laptop will become a foundation for innovation, a tool in tune with their different interests and talents.

But the present situation, more than 80% of people in the world have never even heard a dial tone, let alone surfed the Web. And the gap between the information haves and have-nots is widening. This is the digital divide. And it has become quite essential to bridge this much widening gap.

The accessibility of rural areas to the Internet is a test of the digital divide. But nowadays there are different ways to eliminate the digital divide in rural areas like Power line communication, Broadband Wireless (WiFi), proprietary and upcoming WiMAX systems, Communications satellite with two-way access to the Internet, The Simputer, a handheld computer intended for the masses of India and other developing countries developed at IISc Bangalore, and MIT Media Lab's $100 laptop, intended to be purchased by education ministries and distributed to poor children world wide.

But there exists few barriers like the cost, and the connectivity. Some technological improvements are also required. And any technology which aims to bridge this divide should be universally and cheaply accessible. The price can be brought down by large consumption (Moore’s Law) but the consumption volume increases only when we have a low price.

Does it seem like a Paradox to you? May not be, but it needs constant focus and concerned efforts towards developing technical and technological Solutions for “Bridging The Digital Divide”.

Evolving languages

You would have seen that the way of communication has changed very much in comparision with what was earlier. This is because as time passes by we evolve, so does our style. It might be to better itself in more than one way. Language is one of them which constantly reflects the changes in its usage.

For instance I could give an example in our way of communication. Instead of acknowledging by saying a complete sensible phrase we tend to say "Ya .. Ya.." we can also ascertain by telling "YES". But as I said we would prefer to use slang with a repetition. Now to put it technically, We first decrease the amount of information to be conveyed from YES.. to Ya..

This is similar to source encoding employed in "Communication Systems". Source encoding decreases the redundant information. If one can understand that you acknowledge by saying Ya instead of Yes than simply why to spend extra energy on telling the longer one. Remember, evolution is all about conserving energy by finding newer ways of doing the same thing.

Now the point to be noted is that we tend to repeat the slang "Ya.. Ya..". This is done to ensure that the message does reach the destination and also with the right amount of emphasis. The corresponding analogy in communication systems is that we perform "channel encoding" .

Channel coding puts in redundant data into the message so that it can be decoded properly even under the effect of noise. Now don't you wonder that we had just removed redundant data during source encoding but now we are putting in redundant data during channel encoding.

But the important point to note is that we can't do away with channel encoding due to the omnipresent noise.
So instead of putting in redundant data for the actual message, we first decrease the amount information through source encoding then perform channel encoding. So now we do know how and why at all the slangs originated. Don't We? "Ya.. Ya.."