Video Transcript: Globalization and the Digital Divide

Hello and welcome back to Information Systems introduction, and we are in  week 11 with our globalization and the digital divide week this is going to have  some great topics for conversation and really allow us to think bigger, think  wider, into into the global arena. And as we're going to look at the learning  objectives, you're going to see that kind of zooming out in all the areas, just to  kind of get a better perspective. Like to go ahead and start us off in prayer. So  Dear heavenly Father. Thank you for thank you for each student. I ask you to  watch over them this week, as they are, as they're completing every task that  that allows them to be good members of their family, good members of their  churches, good members of their organizations, just contributing to the best of  their ability, Lord, and we ask that you just, you know, look over our our  understanding, and give us wisdom and understanding when it comes to these  topics of globalization and the empathy required to really understand others  point of view that might not be our situation, but still be able to, you know, make  good decisions and and really process what others are going through. So we  ask that you, you soften our hearts, you open up our minds, and you, you allow  this learning to happen and, and we know we're just so thankful for you, Lord  and and in your heavenly name. We pray Amen. Week 11. Here we are  globalization and the digital divide. Here are the learning objectives we have at  the end of this chapter, hopefully you're going to be able to explain the concept  of globalization. What does that word even mean? Globalization? Describe the  role of IT in globalization. We're going to be able to identify the issues  experienced by firms as they face a global economy. So it's not it's not as easy  as it sounds, to take your internet, your organization, international, some of the  issues and challenges experienced by firms. We're going to go through those  and then we're going to define the digital divide and explain Nielsen's three  stages of the digital divide. So let's jump in. All right. What is globalization?  Globalization refers to the integration of goods, services and culture among the  nations of the world, and we can see that we've been experiencing globalization  since colonization. So to some degree, it's just getting easier as the world  seems to be getting smaller and advances in all of our communication,  telecommunication, transportation have really accelerated this globalization  effect. The internet has made all nations next door neighbors on what used to be communication would have been impossible for remote areas geographically.  Now we can have those conversations. We can have open trade. We can have  a lot of real collaboration that wouldn't have been possible before, before the  internet. So the rise of network society, this was so we're going to go through  some some published works here that was published in 1996 that we're now into this network society where we're all connected on a global scale. We can see  here in 2000 It was published that it's an economy with the capacity to work as a unit in real time, on a planetary scale, and then in 2005 Friedman demonstrating that the world is flat. And we're going to go into that, that shrinking of the world, 

of this of this flat access, access to other nations and part of our globalization  efforts. And we're going to go through that in just a moment. But first, we're  going to talk about the three eras that happened during globalization,  globalization, 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 so Friedman impacted those impacts on person,  on personal computing, the internet, communication, software, all those impacts  have been happening on businesses, specifically the impact they had on  globalization. So we're going to go through globalization 1.0 first, and that is  from 1492 till about 1800 this was centered around countries. Specifically. It's  about how much horsepower, wind power, steam power each country had. And  how creatively it was deployed to go and explore and to go and colonize other  places and to have that communication. At this point, the world was large, right  in 1492 and when this happened in this first era of globalization, I say the world  shrank from size large to a size medium. You're going to notice a pattern that  emerges here as we go on to the next era of globalization, which is 2.0 and  that's from 1800 till about the year 2000 so we're talking those 200 years. The  only interruption to that mainly were the main two world wars. And it was a  dynamic force driving change with the multinational companies. So these  companies that were providing opportunity for trade, for collaboration, for these  these agreements between nations. And once that happened from in those 200  years, 1800 to the year 2000 so we had a large to medium. Now we have the  world was a size medium, and it kind of went down just a shrunk to a size small.  So as we moved on now to the 3.0 this is our current era that we're in now, and  as the speed of processing and the speed of internet connections have  increased, with the capability that came along with that has been, you know,  with the personal computers, the fiber optic internet connections, this flat world  platform of being all interconnected, it allows small groups and individuals to go  global, and now the world has shrunk from a size small to a size tiny, if you  agree with this methodology, going through the different eras of globalization. So how does IT factor into globalization? We're going to see here the graphical user interface for personal computers, internet infrastructure, the open source  movement, where you're going to have those. And we talked in, I believe, the  third week in the software week, about open source and what it means to have  completely available and free code that others can use to develop and grow  certain softwares and source codes from one place to another. So that open  source movement was was huge for globalization, the mobile technologies that  exist and the introduction of software to automate integrate business processes  that allow organizations to work together seamlessly that might not have been  able to do that in the past. So those business processes that we're talking about  that's going to be software that allows people to work together more easily,  allowing different software packages and databases to integrate with each other  more easily. An example of this is going to be payment processors and shipping  calculations that allow those easy relationships and communications between 

companies that might not be using the exact same platforms, they're still able to  do business and have a global relationships. So here are the advantages of  global firms, the new era of globalization. 3.0 allows any business to become  international. That means that before where you'd have to enter into, you know,  a global trade contract you need to, you know, contract, transportation and these special relationships where now, really any business, your small business on  Etsy, can become international with, with our our mobile computing advantages  of global firms also include the ability to locate expertise and labor around the  world. You're not just limited to your geographic area for who's around that can  do what you need them to do, or offer you goods and services that you need.  You now have your yellow pages have expanded globally at this point, you can  operate 24 hours a day at this point where you are not limited to the working  hours in your neighborhood. We are on a global time clock, which is 24 hours.  Also, there's a larger market, if you are the one who is producing goods or  services, definitely a larger market for your products. You You can compete on  the global scale, where you would have really had to be a really large player in  the game before to have that kind of marketplace available to you. Those are  the advantages. Here's the challenges of global firms. There are infrastructure  differences, certainly the labor laws and regulations. Are different from country to country. The legal restrictions certainly are different when it comes to all kinds of things, the language, the customs, the preferences in dealing with in dealing  with organizations from other places where things might be very commonplace,  the way you do it is not the way business is done in another country, and you  want to make sure that you're being sensitive to all of those customs and  cultural preferences. International shipping can be a huge bear and a challenge  for global firms, depending on what product or service you're using, and also,  again, those cultural differences. All right, we're going to talk about the digital  divide. And this is, there's going to be a few slides about this digital divide. It is  quite a large part of this, of this chapter, and something that, if you are an  aspiring IT professional, something that you should have a solid background  upon. And this is that the internet is creating that separation between those who  have access to the global network and those who don't. So that separation of  those who do and who don't, that is the digital divide. So the digital divide could  prevent certain categories of people. So maybe it's people with low income  housing, senior citizens, single parent with child in their home, people who are  severely undereducated, minorities, residents of very rural areas, people who  have difficulty having that access to that global network, from receiving  adequate access to those resources offered by computer technology. And so  when you have some that are so readily available and some that just don't have  access, this digital divide occurs. So it can occur between countries, regions,  even neighborhoods, if you notice that one neighborhood has access to some of these technological resources and that the next, the next neighborhood over, 

does not being able to see that in many United States cities, there's pockets with little or no internet access, and then right down the road, high speed broadband  is readily available to the entire town. So still working on some of those  infrastructure solutions, there are some areas where you'd still need to have a  satellite internet solution or something similar to be able to have online access in some of those more remote or rural areas or pocket cities within the United  States that just don't have the coverage necessary for this global connection  that we're talking about. And there's been lots of solutions that have been tried  with mixed success over the years to kind of close this gap of the digital divide.  And those are going to be the giving one laptop per child in the public school  system, the cyber cafes, these coffee houses that could provide internet  services to some of these areas that might not have access in a residential  situation. And, you know, there's been mixed success of some of these solutions that could close that digital divide gap. Here's a little more. Another view of the  problem was was proposed by Nielsen, and that is that there's three stages of a  digital divide that's going to be an economic one, a usability problem and  empowerment. So when we take the economic divide, the usability divide and  empowerment divide. Those are the stages that really contribute to the general  digital divide. That word that we've been talking about with access versus no  access. Let's break that down a little bit. So the first one, the first stage here, the economic divide, or economic divide, however you prefer to pronounce it, what's usually called so this, this first component is the idea that some people can  afford to have a computer and internet access, and some people can't, even  though hardware is very much cheaper today than it has been in the past, and  that in the future, computers are going to be cheaper and more powerful. Going  back to that Moore's Law of the processing speed increasing substantially every  two years, doubling. So Nielsen suggests that this cost is that cost isn't going to  be as big of a deal in the future, as the as it becomes more affordable to have  home computers and internet connections with, as Moore's law suggests, with  those higher speeds and the really the profit margins diminishing for those  products and services. So. So the usability divide was that second component,  and that's going to be according to Nielsen, technology remains so complicated,  many people couldn't use a computer, even if they got one for free, and this one  makes me sad. So even for those people who can use a computer, accessing all the benefits of having one, is just beyond their understanding. If they if they  were given that computer and 10 years of free time, they just wouldn't be able to harness all the benefits of having that global network at their fingertips. We'll  notice this problem particularly evident with low literacy individuals, senior  citizens who are not really interested in learning the new you know, new  technologies and digital natives versus digital immigrants is what you'll see this  as. A lot digital natives, they were born with this technology. It is part of their  DMA. It's part of the way they grew up, and they're very comfortable, versus 

digital immigrants who are just visiting, and they don't know how they feel about  it yet, and they've just arrived here in the digital landscape, and some of them  are not a fan. So we know how to solve this problem, but the solution is not cost  effective, and we would think that that that solution would be certainly training  and access to everyone who would want it, so that I don't know how isn't going  to be a reason, because you'll be taught how. Finally, the empowerment divide,  this one is the trickiest. It's the most difficult to solve. It's concerned with how we  use technology to empower ourselves. So very few users truly understand the  power that digital technologies, what it can do for them. Researchers report that  few people contribute content to the internet on the on the global scale, we know that there are quite you know, there's not a lack of authors on the internet, for  sure, but relatively speaking, very few people are contributing to that digital  footprint on the internet. More gleaning information, rather than having it be an  interactive experience. Few users use those advanced search features. Many  people are going to limit what they can do online by just taking the very basic  default settings. They're not customizing those settings and having those  systems really work in tandem together and and have a having a customized  experience, but more so plugging in their computer straight out of the box and  using the applications that are there, and that's kind of more of a limited  functionality. And some people just don't understand how they can be truly  empowered. They don't know what's possible. And the reason this one is the  most difficult to solve is this one is really, really a lesson in agency and in  training and education that it's not just how to use your computer, but having  people think bigger about what is possible and what what could be if they were  to really embrace the you know, embrace the technology and make the digital  divide smaller. So in summary, we're going to talk about, or we did talk about,  the concept of globalization, what that really means, and the role of IT in that  globalization, and how we talked about the world starting off very large in 1492  is where we our timeline started, and that as we got closer to the modern age,  the world just went from large to medium to small to tiny. We identified the  issues experienced by firms in the global economy. We know the challenges that they're facing, and then we define that digital divide and Nielsen's three stages  of the empowerment, the usability and the economic divide as part of the three  stages of the digital divide from Nielsen. So thank you so much for for sticking  with me here as we talk about this topic of globalization. Then we know that. We know that the access is there. We know that we're able to harness the power of  IT and the Internet, as long as we just, you know we we get the training that we  need. We look at these three areas of divide, and we want to make sure that  we're not falling into one of those areas where we're falling into a empowered  versus the non empowered populations, and we want to make sure that as  many people as possible we can get to understand the possibilities, to learn how to use them successfully, and then be able to financially afford these things that 

we're talking about. So thank you again for sticking with me. Our last module,  our last week is the last week, which is going to be ethics and information  systems, and then information systems in the future and beyond. So I  appreciate spending this time with you, and I will see you very soon. Thank you.