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April 1, 2008
I see that the digital economy bit of the 2020 Summit has disappeared. So where are we on this? Anyone have any ideas? What is the connection to the creative economy and social networking and the innovation system in the changing media landscape? How do we begin to connect these diverse flows together? Is it through an information or knowledge society?
Let's begin with David Frith, who writes Doubleclick in The Australian. Those, like The Australian, who claim to have their pulse on the nation should have some ideas, shouldn't they? Firth has a post that considers and questions the telco's view of the infrastructure underpinning the digital economy:
WiFi hotspots - now spreading through cities worldwide like a virus - will become as irrelevant as telephone booths... WiFi is doomed because: (a) more and more people are switching to mobile third-generation (3G) phone services such as Telstra's Next G, and (b) support for high-speed packet access (HSPA) networks such as Next G is being built into more laptops.With a little 3G gizmo plugged into the USB port on our Apple MacBook, and an external antenna plugged into the module, we can log on to the internet wirelessly at very fast speeds just about anywhere in Australia, even in moving trains.Optus, Vodafone and Hutchison offer similar services, although without the geographic spread at this stage.
Well I have one of these 3G gizmo's for my Toshiba laptop and it works fine in metropolitan Australia--eg., when I was in Perth last week. I do not need to use a phone to blog, nor do I want to. Even Apple's iPhone, which connects to the internet via WiFi, probably won't change the fact that it is the laptop which is my mobile toolbox, not the phone. It was what I could do with the technology that was important.
Frith, who is arguing against the telco view of the digital economy, goes on to say:
Now it's true that if you have a 3G mobile broadband connection, you're unlikely to use an airport WiFi hotspot; simply because the airport monopolies charge mightily for WiFi, but there are a lot more WiFi users than 3G mobile broadband users, and we can't see the hotspots becoming the equivalent of unused telephone boxes for years to come.
The WiFi hotspots are free in most Australian airports in the capital cities --apart from Sydney. I've been heavily reliant on them in the past. What is noticeable is the lack of WiFi hotspots in our cities which is what drove me to get a 3G connection.
Firth's argument for WiFi amounts to this:
There are WiFi and 3G connections, a web browser and GPS navigation maps. So WiFi is far from dying, or even indisposed, but there's no doubt 3G mobile broadband is an up-and-comer that will make inroads in its market.
He has no argument. There is no mention of what Internode's Regional WiMax Network is achieving; what Internode is doing in Adelaide with hotspots, or how viable the strategy of building a series of hot spots into a wireless network is. Nor does Firth consider what Australians might do with their digital capability once they’ve got it, or how we will acquire the skills and motivations required to benefit fully from this new technological mode of being. As John Hartley points out:
The physical ICT infrastructure that has developed since the 1990s has not been matched by a concomitant investment in education – public or private – to promote creative uptake of digital technologies by entire populations. Usage across different demographics is patchy to say the least, continuing to reproduce the class and demographic divides inherited from the industrial era. The scaling up of digital literacy is left largely to entertainment providers and those who want users for their proprietary software applications. In other words, the market.
He adds that for the most part the education system has responded to the digital era by prohibiting school-based access to digital environments, apart from walled gardens under strict teacher control. From this, kids also learn that formal education’s top priority is not to make them digitally literate but to “protect” them from “inappropriate” content and online predators. Although schools and universities certainly teach “ICT skills” and even “creative practice,” so far they have not proven to be adept at enabling demand-driven and distributed learning networks for imaginative rather than instrumental purposes.
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Gary
The John Hartley article at Creative Economy is a gem. Look at this paragraph, for instance:
So they become digitally literate outside of the school. I'm having to acquire this kind of literacy in a DIY mode.