Friday 1 June 2018

Digital Inequality

            Thomas Friedman views the world as a level playing field in his book The World Is Flat, he says that all competitors have an equal opportunity. Well, this argument is right to some extent, with the development of digitization, the worldwide information can be shared with everyone from five-year-olds to ninety-five-year-olds. However, there still have inequality in the age, social class, gender and race. Although everyone can access the information equally, the ability and stereotype still can cause the inequality.
            First, the digital inequality is obvious between the young people and elder people, as elder people may lack digital literacy. Take my grandfather as an example, he was a doctor in a hospital, but the hospital required every doctor to use the computer to input patient’s information, so my grandfather decided to have an early retirement. Nowadays, the computer literacy is an essential skill. Most companies will require the candidates master the office software. But there are still many people unable to be trained the computer skill due to the economic condition. The digitalization enlarges the divergence between the wealthy people and poor people. 
            As for me, I have been a social media user for seven years and media is my major so I can say that my digital literacy is above the average. However, there is still some inequality happened to me. For example, when I’m playing the League of Legends, my partners will pre-judge I’m a bad player as they see my username is girly and won’t let me play ADC (Attack Damage Carry, is an archaic term used to refer to a champion that deals strong, continuous damage with their basic attacks and scales with attack-related stats.). I admit that there is the difference between man and woman, but we should strive to erase the prejudice. 
            Social technology did offer a platform for everyone, but it is also a challenge. We need to endeavour to survive in the information era. (325 words)

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