The Digital Divide in South America

As one would expect, the digital divide is not isolated to any single country or continent.  In 2014, Miguel Angel Perez Alvarez wrote an article for Latin American Science website addressing South America's challenge in bridging its technical inequalities.  Perez Alvarez raises some very interesting points that would apply to populations regardless of geography, including what he calls the Civic Value of the Internet: 

"Regarding the cultural order it is necessary to undertake campaigns in all spheres of social life which allow citizens to realize the benefits of Internet access. These contribute to the social construction of well-founded knowledge so that citizens can demand access (at reasonable prices and with modern technologies) for education, health, communication, organization of social life, financial transactions and governmental action."

As we've witnessed with increasing frequency early in the 21st century, access to the Internet means many things to many people.  To naysayers, it is a conduit to video games, pornography, and social media...to others it means--as Alvarez Perez points out--access to educational materials, social movements, and a political voice.  Librarians everywhere should keep in mind that just because patrons aren't spending their time online poring over cutting-edge scientific journals doesn't mean that their time using the Internet isn't productive in its own way.

Researchers can use another valuable tool located on this particular page: an interactive map of South America, the Caribbean, and Mexico which projects the percentage of Internet usage in each country when a computer mouse hovers over it.

Photo courtesy of http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241297

Source:

Miguel Angel Perez Alvarez, "Latin America's digital divide,' http://latinamericanscience.org/2014/05/latin-americas-digital-divide/