Iranian twitter revolt. Finland, France say internet access is a right.

Saw it coming about 4 years ago. Told ya so.

This is a topic I wrote about a lot at my time in The New School Media Studies program. No one there was writing about stuff like this. A little bitter about my experience there, yes. But my writings aren’t in vain because this is a very popular topic for research these days. I will post my writings here someday. But until then sink your teeth into this:

“Equity and Accessibility

Finally, the collection spends some time on the important issues of equity of access. It is noted by some contributors that a “digital divide” exists between those that are online and using the Net and those who are not. These divides can exist across racial, economic, political, gender, language, and geographic lines. Lorna Roth, in her contribution, reviews how in the US access to computers and the Internet is highly skewed to white communities. Even after controlling for income, African-Americans by contrast are disproportionably unconnected.

A counter argument is also made in some of the essays. We hear about an ‘explosion’ of Internet access in Africa (Jacques Gauthier), how women’s groups are effectively using the Net in the former Yugoslavia (Djurdja Knezevic), and, overall, how “oppressed” people and activist groups are continuing to build their Net presence and sophistication (Wayne Sharpe as well as the contributions of Steven Hick and Ariel Teplitsky).”

From “Can the Internet be a Human Right?”, by Michael L. Best

So, the digital divide peeks under the sheets again. Access to sustainable hardware, internet connectivity and open source software are elements for helping to bridge the divide between information-haves and information-have-nots.

And in the end shared information is crushing to the system of poverty. The nations that recognize high speed internet access as a right are currently France, Greece, Estonia and Finland.

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