This book presents analysis of the "learning digital divide" in different countries - developed and developing - and the policies and specific innovations designed to bridge it.

Bridging the Digital Divide investigates problems of unequal access to information technology. The author redefines this problem, examines its severity, and lays out what the future implications might be if the digital divide continues to exist. Examines unequal access to information technology in the United States. Analyses the success or failure of policies designed to address the digital divide. Draws on extensive fieldwork in several US cities. Makes recommendations for future public policy. Series editor: Manuel Castells.

In many international settings, developing economies are in danger of declining as the digital divide becomes the knowledge divide. This decline attacks the very fabric of cohesion and purpose for these regional societies delivering increased social, health, economic and sustainability problems. The examples in this book will provide leaders, policy developers, researchers, students and community with successful strategies and principles of ICT use in education to address these needs. This book will discuss how educational technology can be used to transform education and assist developing communities to close the knowledge divide. It will provide comprehensive coverage of educational technology in development in different professions and parts of world. The book will provide examples of best practice, case studies and principles for educators, community leaders, researchers and policy advisers on the use of educational technology for development. In particular, it will provide examples of how education can be provided more flexibly in order to provide access to hitherto disadvantaged communities and individuals.

In many international settings, developing economies are in danger of declining as the digital divide becomes the knowledge divide. This decline attacks the very fabric of cohesion and purpose for these regional societies delivering increased social, health, economic and sustainability problems. The examples in this book will provide leaders, policy developers, researchers, students and community with successful strategies and principles of ICT use in education to address these needs. --

This book develops and examines the concepts and strategies for rural empowerment through the formation of a community-driven social knowledge management (SKM) framework aided by social technology. The framework is aimed at mobilizing knowledge resources to bridge the rural–urban knowledge divide while securing rural empowerment using digital connections and social collaborations built on strategies of self-sustenance and self-development. With key empirical findings supplemented by relevant theoretical structures, case studies, illustrative figures and a lucid style, the book combines social technologies and social development to derive a social knowledge management platform. It shows how the proposed SKM framework can enhance knowledge capabilities of rural actors by facilitating connection among rural–urban entities through formation of purposive virtual communities, which allow social agents to create, modify and share content collaboratively. The volume brings forward diverse issues such as conceptual foundations; bridging the rural–urban knowledge and information divide; issues of information and knowledge asymmetry; a knowledge-theoretic perspective of rural empowerment; knowledge capability, freedom of choice and wellbeing, to provide a comprehensive outlook on building a knowledge society through digital empowerment. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of development studies, rural sociology, management studies, IT/IS, knowledge management and ICT for development, public policy, sociology, political economy and development economics. It will benefit professionals and policymakers, government and nongovernment bodies and international agencies involved with policy decisions related to application of technologies for rural development, social workers and those in the development sector.

This book explains the concept of education divide in rural India and identifies various factors that shape and sustain such a divide. In doing so, it also discusses a range of attempts undertaken to bridge the education divide. Subsequently, the book has attempted in providing a socio-technical framework towards optimally deploying social technologies for addressing the issue of education divide of marginalized communities. The proposed framework offers a transition from traditional content-centric, teacher-centric and centralized education ecosystem to a connection-centric, learner-centric and decentralized education ecosystem of the socio-digital age. It demonstrates how Internet-enabled digital platforms, based on the principles of sharism and mass collaboration using social technologies, could help to solve one of the greatest problems facing the world: mitigating the extant education divide by delivering quality education to underprivileged sections of society. The book also presents empirical validation of the proposed framework to show how a community-driven blended learning platform can mobilize the dormant knowledge capital of domain experts to teach underprivileged rural Indian children, as well as help form communities of practice to enable lifelong learning for the rural adult population. The book closes by pointing out the challenges involved in building an equitable education ecosystem using social technologies and ultimately the possibility of creating a fair and equitable society. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers and practitioners in the domain of education who want to transform education ecosystems by using technological and process-related innovations to improve educational practices for underprivileged sections of society.

Again and again social change movements--on matter s from the environment to women's rights--have been run by middle-class leaders. But in order to make real progress toward economic and social change, poor people--those most affected by social problems--must be the ones to speak up and lead. It can be done. Linda Stout herself grew up in poverty in rural North Carolina and went on to found one of this country's most successful and innovative grassroots organizations, the Piedmont Peace Project. Working for peace, jobs, health care, and basic social services in North Carolina's conservative Piedmont region, the project has attracted national attention for its success in drawing leadership from within a working-class community, actively encouraging diversity, and empowering people who have never had a voice in policy decisions to speak up for their own interests. The Piedmont Peace Project demonstrates that new ways of organizing can really work. Bridging the Class Divide tells the inspiring story of Linda Stout's life as the daughter of a tenant farmer, as a self-taught activist, and as a leader in the progressive movement. It also gives practical lessons on how to build real working relationships between people of different income levels, races, and genders. This book will inspire and enrich anyone who works for change in our society.

Two experts on the information economy explore the true economic value of technology and innovation. A wave of business innovation is driving the productivity resurgence in the U.S. economy. In Wired for Innovation, Erik Brynjolfsson and Adam Saunders describe how information technology directly or indirectly created this productivity explosion, reversing decades of slow growth. They argue that the companies with the highest level of returns to their technology investment are doing more than just buying technology; they are inventing new forms of organizational capital to become digital organizations. These innovations include a cluster of organizational and business-process changes, including broader sharing of information, decentralized decision-making, linking pay and promotions to performance, pruning of non-core products and processes, and greater investments in training and education. Innovation continues through booms and busts. This book provides an essential guide for policy makers and economists who need to understand how information technology is transforming the economy and how it will create value in the coming decade.

Contrary to optimistic visions of a free internet for all, the problem of the ‘digital divide’ – the disparity between those with access to internet technology and those without – has persisted for close to twenty-five years. In this textbook, Jan van Dijk considers the state of digital inequality and what we can do to tackle it. Through an accessible framework based on empirical research, he explores the motivations and challenges of seeking access and the development of requisite digital skills. He addresses key questions such as: Does digital inequality reduce or reinforce existing, traditional inequalities? Does it create new, previously unknown social inequalities? While digital inequality affects all aspects of society and the problem is here to stay, Van Dijk outlines policies we can put in place to mitigate it. The Digital Divide is required reading for students and scholars of media, communication, sociology, and related disciplines, as well as for policymakers.

Does technology change who we are, and if so, in what ways? Can humanity transcend physical bodies and spaces? Will AI and genetic engineering help us reach new heights or will they unleash dystopias? How do we face mortality, our own and that of our warming planet? Questions like these—which are only growing more urgent—can be answered only by drawing on different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing. They challenge us to bridge the divide between the sciences and the humanities and bring together perspectives that are too often kept apart. Great Minds Don’t Think Alike presents conversations among leading scientists, philosophers, historians, and public intellectuals that exemplify openness to diverse viewpoints and the productive exchange of ideas. Pulitzer and Templeton Prize winners, MacArthur “genius” grant awardees, and other acclaimed writers and thinkers debate the big questions: who we are, the nature of reality, science and religion, consciousness and materialism, and the mysteries of time. In so doing, they also inquire into how uniting experts from different areas of study to consider these topics might help us address the existential risks we face today. Convened and moderated by the physicist and author Marcelo Gleiser, these public dialogues model constructive engagement between the sciences and the humanities—and show why intellectual cooperation is necessary to shape our collective future. Contributors include David Chalmers and Antonio Damasio; Sean Carroll and B. Alan Wallace; Patricia Churchland and Jill Tarter; Rebecca Goldstein and Alan Lightman; Jimena Canales and Paul Davies; Ed Boyden and Mark O’Connell; Elizabeth Kolbert and Siddhartha Mukherjee; Jeremy DeSilva, David Grinspoon, and Tasneem Zehra Husain.