Final Project: Abstract

The digital divide, in any form,  is essentially a lack of access to digital tools and technology. While the reasons for the existence of this divide are numerous, this essay will focus specifically on how mobile phone technology is helping to narrow the divide within rural america.

Mobile phones are no longer devices used exclusively for voice communications between one or more parties. Instead, mobile phones are hardwired to cyberspace in various manifestations that make them far more than the simple communications devices they were certainly originally intended to be.

Drawing inspiration from Howard Rheingold's article, "Mobile Phones, Ritual Interaction and Social Capital", I will argue that modern cell phones, with their digital connection to cyberspace, are not only helping to close the divide's gap within rural agricultural areas in the U.S., but changing how they go about planting, watering, fertilizing, and harvesting their crops.


Works Cited:


Benedikt, Michael. “Cyberspace: First steps.” David Bell and Barbara Kennedy. The Cybercultures Reader 2nd Ed.  New York: Routledge, 2007.  19-33 

de Souza e Silva, Adriana. “From Cyberspace to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies as Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces.”The Cybercultures Reader 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge, 2007. 757-772

"NWS National Digital Forecast Database" National Weather Service 9 May 2007. http://www.weather.gov/ndfd

Rheingold, Howard. "Mobile Phones, Ritual Interaction, and Social Capital." TheFeature.com Archives. 21 Apr 2005. http://www.thefeaturearchives.com/topic/Culture/Mobile_Phones__Ritual_Interaction_and_Social_Capital.html

Shirky, Clay. "Here Comes Everybody." New York: Penguin, 2008.

Uncapher, Willard. "Electronic Homesteading on the Rural Frontier: Big Sky Telegraph and It's Community." The Cybercultures Reader 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge, 2007. 191-212

Topic Proposal: Digital Rights?

I'd like to write about how the conveniences of cyberspace, such as information at our fingertips, social networking, and digital media (to name a few) actually allow us to do things that have never been done before.  However, the price of this convenience is the shrinking of our rights.   For example, owning a copyrighted work is no longer a cut and dry matter.  If you own a digital copy of something, you can no longer legally (at least in the U.S.) do with it what you want.  You can't sell it, lend it out, or even back it up without being in violation of someone's EULA or government law.  Contrast this with owning a physical copy of something.  You can lend it out, sell it, or do with it what you will (as long as you keep within the copyright laws).

To summarize, I'd like to argue that we are losing rights in almost as fast a manner as we're gaining new "convenient" technologies (saying nothing about privacy, which is another paper altogether).  I will base this argument against current copyright law, the "Fair Use Doctrine" and the DMCA.  In doing so, I will contrast these laws with EULA's and what the EFF argues is not fair use.