My ITPRO daily newsletter has just arrived, and pointed me in the direction of this analysis piece on the haves and have nots of the technology world by the very insightful Eric Doyle.
Eric manages to compare the communication facilities available to parts of rural India with the dreaded connectivity blackspots that exist in rural UK without coming over as trite, which is an achievement in itself. He makes the very valid point that those in the UK who don't have access to broadband facilities or even mobile phone coverage are significantly digitally and societally disadvantaged compared with those of us living in more connected towns and cities. I'll leave you read the article to get the point that Eric makes far better than I, but it is certainly food for thought.
Having spent a week in North Yorkshire at the start of July, in an area with practically zero phone coverage, I felt the minor inconvenience of being unable to feed my web-addictions of facebook and twitter, but we were rarely truly troubled. We were fortunate in that no emergencies arose while we were in remote areas. But although I didn't get a mobile phone until I was 21, and didn't use a PC until I was 20, it's already hard for me to imagine life before I could access the benefits of the web at a decent speed. Not being able to do so would put my lifestyle back 12 years.
It's fair enough if you live in a remote rural area because you want to be disconnected, but we shouldn't be seeing the development of a two-speed society for those who happen to live beyond the reach of a broadband connection.
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In other news, today the PR dept has mostly been drafting awards press releases thanks to the lovely people at www.bertl.com and www.buyerslab.com .
Plus, I'm thinking of changing our media database supplier...
And I've been reviewing some video content...
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