Ethical Dilemma of the Digital Divide in the Threshold of Social Inequalities in Africa

2018 ◽  
pp. 73-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Essien Essien
Keyword(s):  
Digital Divide ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ict Tools ◽  
The Web

Despite the ubiquitous nature of the internet in our daily lives today, the digital divide discourse in Africa highlights the inequitable social distribution of ICT access. The failure to have equitable social access to ICT tools, or a lack of skills to operate them, clearly depicts a technological predicament and a metaphor that questions the social gaps between humans that can access and use the web, and those that cannot. Relying on content analysis of extensive literature on the digital divide, this paper explores the notion of digital divide social inequalities in Africa, especially as it concerns how it should be understood, valued and managed. Findings, reveals that though the new information technologies are rapidly changing lives of a small but growing number of people across Africa, decisions on content, knowledge and participation excludes Africans. The digital divide therefore, has the potential to create, perpetuate and exacerbate morally objectionable conditions that can replicate poverty, construct exclusion and foregrounds social inequality in many African societies.

Do the Social Web 2.0 Media Foster Democratization?

2016 ◽  
pp. 314-330
Author(s):  
Rasoul Namazi
Keyword(s):  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Internet ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Negative Impacts

This chapter studies the influence of the Internet and new Web 2.0 technologies on the process of democratization in authoritarian regimes. The objective is to show that the new information technologies are not necessarily helpful to dissident movements and have even some negative impacts on the process of democratization. The author questions the capacity of Internet to transmit political information discusses how the new technologies contribute to the depoliticization of societies by creating passive citizens in authoritarian regimes. This chapter also shows how authoritarian regimes use new information technologies as instruments of control and repression and questions the effectiveness of the new cyber-activism by explaining the structure of the Internet and discussing the capacity of the new technologies in creating political community.

Information Technologies and Identity

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Gaia Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Testing ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Duty To Warn ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Accommodation ◽  
Failure To Protect

AbstractNew technologies often create novel social tensions that induce legal change. Two new information technologies: genetic testing and the Internet exert pressures on our normative conception of identity. Identity related tensions underlie a broad range of social and legal controversies. The article argues that the ubiquity of these tensions creates a need to elevate the legal interest of identity from the shadows of legal discourse to the center of the stage. Identity interests should be incorporated into our legal discourse in order to improve the social accommodation of the two information technologies through the resolution of these identity tensions. Part I of the article examines the conception of identity as a life narrative and its importance as a zone of normative concern. Part II of the article fleshes out the abstract identity argument by providing concrete legal examples involving the physician’s duty to warn in cases of genetic testing and gay anonymity on the Internet. Part III explains the failure to protect identity interests with traditional privacy tools and argues for the need to incorporate identity interests into the legal debate.

From modernization to neoliberalism? How IT opinion leaders imagine the information society

2018 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Wu ◽  
Guoqiang Yun
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Information Society ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Opinion Leaders ◽  
The Internet ◽  
New Information ◽  
Concrete Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Intermediaries

Before the information society becomes reality, it exits as discourses and arguments. These narratives shape people's expectations, imaginations, and understandings of the concrete form of information society. The article first reviews some recent literature on the social and cultural history of the Internet and information technologies. Then, we will critically examine some prominent discourses on new information technology, especially the Internet, by cultural intermediaries in China. We hope to understand how the different imaginations of information society come into being, their internal diversity, their sources of influence, and how they help imagine a social form in which these technologies shape, belong, and work well.

scholarly journals Educational Opportunities for New Information Technologies in Teaching Foreign Language in High School

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 448-451
Author(s):  
L. Aripzhanova ◽  
M. Mukhitdinova
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Information Age ◽  
Educational Opportunities ◽  
The Internet ◽  
New Information ◽  
Use Of The Internet

The article deals with the use of the Internet in teaching a foreign language. With the advent of the information age, both the scheme of knowledge transfer and the model of the learning process are changing sharply, which requires the improvement of professional training from the position of activation of cognitive processes.

Technology as Competitive Advantage in Intelligence and Facilitator of Security Cooperation

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-36
Author(s):  
Iulian Marius COMAN
Keyword(s):  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Security Cooperation ◽  
Export Controls ◽  
New Information ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Global Access

Technology has become the Intelligence Community’s new reliability, as well as its new challenge. The new transnational adversaries – international terrorists foremost among them – the flood of new information technologies, the easing of export controls on encryption technology and global access to the Internet, has led the security agencies to charting new directions in identifying, gaining access to and successfully exploiting target communications, through cooperation with all related bodies.

Caught in the Web

2013 ◽  
pp. 1294-1314
Author(s):  
Keith A. Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Personal Health Information ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Privacy And Confidentiality ◽  
Medical Privacy ◽  
The Web

The social consequences of the internet are profound. Evidence of this can easily be found in the enormous body of literature discussing its impact on democracy, globalization, social networking, and education. The implications of the internet for medicine have likewise received a great deal of attention from policy makers, clinicians and technology theorists. Medical privacy, in particular, has garnered the lion’s share of attention. Nevertheless, research in this area has been lacking because it either fails to unpack the conceptual and ethical complexities of privacy or overestimates the power of technology and policy to protect our medical privacy. The aims of this chapter are twofold. The first is to provide a nuanced explication of the concept of privacy, and, second, to argue that e-medicine and the policies supposedly designed to protect the privacy and confidentiality of personal health information fail to do so and in some instances make their violations easier to commit.

Private Label Sales through Catalogs with Augmented Reality

2016 ◽  
pp. 275-305
Author(s):  
Gerardo Reyes Ruiz ◽  
Samuel Olmos Peña ◽  
Marisol Hernández Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Augmented Reality ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Private Label ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
New Information

New technologies have changed the way today's own label products are being offered. Today the Internet and even more the so-called social networks have played key roles in dispersing any particular product in a more efficient and dynamic sense. Also, having a smartphone and a wireless high-speed network are no longer a luxury or a temporary fad, but rather a necessity for the new generations. These technological advances and new marketing trends have not gone unnoticed by the medium and large stores. The augmented reality applied to interactive catalogs is a new technology that supports the adding of virtual reality to a real environment which in turn makes it a tool for discovering new uses, forms, and in this case, spending habits. The challenge for companies with their private labels in achieving their business objectives, is providing customers with products and services of the highest quality, thus promoting the efficient and streamlined use of all resources that are accounted for and at the same time promoting the use of new information technologies as a strategic competitive.

Caught in the Web

2011 ◽  
pp. 179-199
Author(s):  
Keith A. Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Personal Health Information ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Privacy And Confidentiality ◽  
Medical Privacy ◽  
The Web

The social consequences of the internet are profound. Evidence of this can easily be found in the enormous body of literature discussing its impact on democracy, globalization, social networking, and education. The implications of the internet for medicine have likewise received a great deal of attention from policy makers, clinicians and technology theorists. Medical privacy, in particular, has garnered the lion’s share of attention. Nevertheless, research in this area has been lacking because it either fails to unpack the conceptual and ethical complexities of privacy or overestimates the power of technology and policy to protect our medical privacy. The aims of this chapter are twofold. The first is to provide a nuanced explication of the concept of privacy, and, second, to argue that e-medicine and the policies supposedly designed to protect the privacy and confidentiality of personal health information fail to do so and in some instances make their violations easier to commit.

Online Virtual Communities as a New Form of Social Relations

2010 ◽  
pp. 2226-2238
Author(s):  
Almudena Moreno Mínguez ◽  
Carolina Suárez Hernán
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cyber Culture

The generalization of the new information technologies has favored the transformation of social structures and the way of relating to others. In this changing process, the logic of the social relationships is characterized by the fragility and the temporality of the communicative systems reciprocity which are established “online” in a new cybernetic culture. “Virtual communities” are created in which the interaction systems established by individuals exceed the traditional categories of time and space. In this manner the individuals create online social webs where they connect and disconnect themselves based on their needs or wishes. The new online communication technologies favor the rigid norms of the “solid society” that dilute in flexible referential contexts and reversible in the context of the “global and liquid society” to which the sociologists Bauman or Beck have referred to. Therefore the objective that the authors propose in this chapter is to try new theoretic tools, from the paradigms of the new sociology of technology, which let them analyze the new relational and cultural processes which are being generated in the cultural context of the information global society, as a consequence of the new communication technologies scope. Definitely the authors propose to analyze the meaning of concepts such as “virtual community”, “cyber culture”, or “contacted individualism”, as well as the meaning and extent of some of the new social and individual behaviors which are maintained in the Net society.

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