Activity 1 - Culturability

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Activity 1 – Culture and the internet

The Yahoo! Sites

The main difference lies in the language and content. No big surprise really.

A comparison of the Chinese vs the Taiwanese and the Spanish vs the Catalonian sites shows that the desire to establish political identities supersedes culturability.

The icons depicted on the Chinese site are markedly different from the rest. Also the positioning of the links – while most sites have the links in a column on the left, the Chinese site has them in a bar lower on the page. Other wise, the reading direction is the same, from left to right.

From examining just the Yahoo and IBM sites, I find little evidence, beyond the Chinese yahoo site, of distinct cultural preferences and biases as stated by Barber and Badre (1998). Has there been a true merging of culture and usability due to exposure to various cultural presences on the Web? After all, it has been 10 years since B and B's paper was published.

My iceberg attempt – pls feel free to edit it!

Surface visible elements	Language – many of the Asian sites were in local languages except for those of the countries where English is widely used e.g. Malaysia, Philippines content of local interest colour – red is the predominant background colour in the Chinese Yahoo whereas all the others had blue
Unspoken rules, traditions, norms	Taboo topics e.g. criticism of royalty in Thailand and Malaysia Criticism of religion in Malaysian yahoo Criticism of government in Chinese yahoo
Unconscious rules, values, beliefs	Explicit nudity

Digital divide

Digital divide has been “somewhat” bridged

Seven years on from when Castells wrote “The Internet galaxy”, the digital divide between heavily populated urban areas and sparsely populated rural areas has been bridged, at least in the UK. According to Allen (2008), demand for internet connectivity was driven by the need for online shopping, banking and communication. Unfortunately, the global digital divide is still very real, although the gap has narrowed (BBC News, 2005).

Foulger (2002) states that there are 7 obstacles to bridging the global gap. These are:

Social and legal constraints – censorship and denial of access by governments (think China)

Economic priorities – Amongst the very poor, basic neccessities such as nutrition and health will come before internet access. However, there is an intermediate group that will find digital access just about affordable. This is where free and open source software can make an impact.

Literacy and language – In 2000, 68% of the Web was in English (ClickZ, 2000). I'm sure the statistics have changed by now (anyone has the latest stats?). However, there's no hiding the fact that if only a small percentage of your population is literate and in Amharic, for that matter, then the divide is bigger.

Basic infrastructure – Buildings with leaking roofs and sporadic power supply do not, as a rule, house computers.

Network infrastructure and connectivity – There has to be a complex layering of networks, such as networked schools, businesses, governments and local ISPs, for the Internet to build upon and connect.

Computer resources – Very much an economic concern.

Choice – There are those who prefer to distance themselves from technology. Not a problem? Well, as overall media turns digital, such people might isolate themselves from world of news and information. This obstacle is restricted to richer nations where the choice exists.

Web 2.0 digital divide

The term “digital divide” appeared as early as 1995 and referred then to “gaps in ownership of computers between groups” (Wikipedia). Later, Digital Divide.org points out that the real issue is not so much “about access to digital technology but about the benefits derived from access”. In the age of Web 2.0, characterised by social networking and democratic publications, unequal global access to the benefits of being connected means, amongst others, that citizens of unjust regimes do not have the technological means to unite their voices to overthrow their undeserving governments (Would Mugabe still be grinding his impoverished nation to dust if Zimbabwe was on the better side of the divide and could blog?).