Final Paper: Cell Phones Bridging the Digital Divide

As I said in my previous post, I plan to cover in my final paper how cell phones are helping to bridge the digital divide. After looking through some sources I have found that I can focus on the topic at a global scale rather than just in the United States. Below are each of my five sources I have chosen and a brief explanation as to how I want to use them.

I will start off with Adriana de Souza e Silva's article, "From Cyber to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies as Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces." I plan to use some of her examples about the blur between the digital and physical world to show that the digital divide has been bridged so much that the digital and physical worlds are now the same thing, they overlap.

My second article I chose is "Bridging the Digital Divide: New Route to Development or New Form of Dependency?" by Robert Hunter Wade. This article will be my source of opposition arguments to mine. I will use Wade's arguments for the downsides of bringing digital technology to everyone and then combat it with my own arguments.

The third article is titled "Flood, Famine and Mobile Phones." It was posted in The Economist and it will be a source of examples for how cell phones are used in disaster relief areas in third world countries. There are some good examples here of how cellphones are used in areas we thought didn't have the technology, proof that the divide is slowly closing.

For my fourth article I chose an article published on Red Herring titled "Mobile Phones Narrow Digital Divide." This article will be the main source of statistics for me. Even though it is a short article it has a lot of useful facts about the spread of digital technology around the world to both rich and poor nations.

My final article is "Mobile Phone Use in a Developing Country: A Malaysian Empirical Study" by Paul Yeow, Yee Yen Yuen, and Regina Connolly. This article covers both positive and negative aspects to the use of mobile phone technology in Asia and more specifically Malaysia. This will be a good source for the use of digital technology in underdeveloped areas.


Works Cited

de Souza e Silva, Adriana. "From Cyber to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies as Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces." The Cybercultures Reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara Kennedy. New York: Routledge. 757-769.

"Flood, Famine, and Mobile Phones." Economist 384.8539 (2007): 61-62. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 26 Mar 2010. < http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2063/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=25952105&site=ehost-live >.

"Mobile Phones Narrow Digital Divide." Red Herring (2008): 5. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 26 Mar 2010. < http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2063/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=36876096&site=ehost-live >.

Wade, Robert Hunter. "Bridging the Digital Divide: New Route to Development or New Form of Dependency?." Global Governance 8.4 (2002): 443-466. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 26 Mar 2010. < http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2063/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=8735617&site=ehost-live >.

Yeow, Paul H.P., Yee Yen Yuen and Regina Connolly. "Mobile Phone Use in a Developing Country: A Malaysian Empirical Study." Journal of Urban Technology 15:1 (2008): 85-116. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 26 Mar 2010. < http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2063/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=32744030&site=ehost-live >.

Topic for the Final Paper

For my final paper I plan to discuss how mobile phones are bridging the digital divide. I will argue how the wide spreading use of mobile phones which now have internet access is closing the gap in the digital divide. I will provide information showing how mobile phones are now more widely used than computers. I also want to look into how many phones are very cheap now which is allowing even lower income families to have access to an internet-ready phone since income is one of the greatest factors in the digital divide.

I came onto this topic because I enjoyed reading Adriana de Souza e Silva's article on mobile phones changing the world around us. I would like to work this article into my argument so I might look into how the evolution of mobile phones into mobile computers allows for people to bridge the digital divide even if they don't have a phone, because so many other people they interact with are connected to the internet at all times. I find how powerful cell phones have become with the introduction of smart phones is extremely interesting so that's why I chose this topic ultimately.