The digital divide causes a significant problem in many struggling parts of the world. “As of 2003, only seven percent of the world's 6.4 billion people have had access to the World Wide Web” [Ryder M, 2005]. The parts of the world that have a predominant amount of internet access is the western world, the United States, Europe and Northern Asia, where as access is more restricted in the poorer less developed parts of the world such as Africa, India and southern parts of Asia. These poorer nations are unable to afford the initial start up cost to be able to invest into technology to allow their nation to be able to have and maintain internet access. This puts these countries at a competitive and economic disadvantage. This is due to the fact that it impacts on society at many levels. By a country not having internet access, it means that schools are unable to teach IT skills and take advantage of the vast amount of information available on the web. With a lack of IT skills people from these countries are unable to compete at an international level.
In contrast the richer countries benefit from more highly trained people who will in turn enable higher economic growth. In urban areas more people seem to have internet access as opposed to rural areas causing yet another divide. Also countries that don’t have internet access are unable to carry out e-commerce and e-business putting their companies at a significant disadvantage with in the global market.
The Language Barrier
There is a significant problem with the available languages on the internet, thus causing a communication barrier for certain countries. The web mainly consists of websites written in English. “By the year 2000, only 20% of all Web sites in the world were in languages other than English, and most of these were in Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese” [Ryder M, 2005]. The less developed countries as mentioned previously such as Africa, Southern Asia and parts of India have very few people that can understand English. “Less than ten percent of people are English-literate while the rest, more than two billion, speak languages that are sparsely represented on the Web” [Ryder M, 2005]. As these countries don’t have internet access there isn’t any market demand to create sites in these languages. So the cycle of not using the internet as they can’t understand it and the internet not having the demand to incorporate different languages will continue until policy makers intervene.
In contrast the richer countries benefit from more highly trained people who will in turn enable higher economic growth. In urban areas more people seem to have internet access as opposed to rural areas causing yet another divide. Also countries that don’t have internet access are unable to carry out e-commerce and e-business putting their companies at a significant disadvantage with in the global market.
The Language Barrier
There is a significant problem with the available languages on the internet, thus causing a communication barrier for certain countries. The web mainly consists of websites written in English. “By the year 2000, only 20% of all Web sites in the world were in languages other than English, and most of these were in Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese” [Ryder M, 2005]. The less developed countries as mentioned previously such as Africa, Southern Asia and parts of India have very few people that can understand English. “Less than ten percent of people are English-literate while the rest, more than two billion, speak languages that are sparsely represented on the Web” [Ryder M, 2005]. As these countries don’t have internet access there isn’t any market demand to create sites in these languages. So the cycle of not using the internet as they can’t understand it and the internet not having the demand to incorporate different languages will continue until policy makers intervene.
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