Explain what the digital divide is; in your answer discuss the Research Paper

Explain what the digital divide is; in your answer discuss the advantages and disadvantages of improving the digital divide - Research Paper Example What does it mean? How did it happen? Does it have any positive or negative effect on our society? What benefits can be had from promoting a digital divide? Should the digital divide be promoted within our society as something that should be supported or not supported? These are but a few of the questions that I am looking forward to answering within the next few pages. I would like to start off this paper by presenting the readers with a basic discussion of the digital divide and its meaning. While the economic divide pertains the method by which the people of the world are separated by the amount of money that they have, the digital divide separates people in terms of their existing or non-existing access to the internet and other forms of communication technology. According to experts, the digital divide exists as a barrier between the urban and rural areas (Rouse, 2005). Upon closer inspection, one will come to the realization that the digital divide, also known as the digital split, refers not only to the people who have easy access to the internet and those who dont, but also among those who have or dont have access to information and communications technology. The term digital divide was then coined, in the 1990s in order to help explain the complex scenario. Due to the globalized market that exists between countries, the presence of the internet and other forms of telecommunication that can help ease the transfer of business information has become one of the utmost important business tools in our era. However, not all countries have state of the art information and communication technology infrastructures in place so the digital divide has already gone beyond borders, thus creating what is now known as the Global Digital Divide. Therefore, the digital divide is not limited to the social or economic statues of people alone. It also includes the members of society who use almost obsolete computers on infantile internet