What is it about?
The text contextualizes for policy makers and legislatures why it is essential to ensure that individuals have appropriate access to the internet and what can be done to achieve it. The interrelationship/overlap between why access is essential, how it can be achieved, and the central role of the individual to the internet economy is explored and translated into the concept of connectedness. From this, solutions for ensuring connectedness for all individuals are developed
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Why is it important?
The internet has become so integrated in our lives that many of us cannot imagine how we could operate without it. This omnipresent ‘being’ affects all forms of ‘normal’ social and economic activity and does so in ways that we do not realize. Those with access are able to engage with government, business, family, and friends more easily, which can lead to an improved standard of living. For the disadvantaged, however – those with the desire but without the capacity – a lack of access can be socially isolating.
Perspectives
Engagement in the internet economy requires both physical access and the individual to have the necessary finances and skills to make and sustain their use. If governments and the international community want a fully functioning internet economy this requires that all individuals must be operating in it. That not all individuals do so means, very simply, that the internet economy is not fully functioning. Dr Cradduck points the way to the future by offering a straight forward solution: governments must adopt appropriate policy now.
Lucy Cradduck
Queensland University of Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Individuals, Innovation, and the Internet: Why Access is Essential, February 2015, Common Ground Publishing,
DOI: 10.18848/978-1-61229-695-1/cgp.
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