Do you have any personal experience with the digital divide?

Yes, I am one of the founders of NairoBits. 6 years ago, in the middle of the internet hype in the western world, we decided to share our skills with those who have the talents but not the means. We wanted to create a project that would lead to the participation of African youth online, creating their own content about their lives, that would give another image of their lives to the rest of the world than the messages we received through our western media. In 1999 t here were already a few ISP's and many internet cafe's, but for the average young person, especially those living in slum areas, computers and the internet was only accessible for high educated office personnel.

Do you know of any organizations that make an effort to bridge the digital divide?

Our own: www.butterfly-works.org and www.nairobits.comand many others, to name a few: www.iicd.org, schoolnet africa, www.viafrica.org, www.baobabconnections.org, www.computersfordevelopment.org

Internet access in low-or marginal-income areas is a problem partly because of the unavailability of broadband and telephone lines. Do you think wireless technology could provide a solution to this problem in such areas?

Yes, wireless technology or using radio waves for internet. this is a very costly investment, but after this is is extremely cheap and usefull for all types of data in remote areas, example www.alin.or.ke

In addition to a dearth of physical access in some locations, there have also been issues regarding people's acceptance of technology's ever- growing role in our societies. In many cases, these "don't-wants" are at an even greater disadvantage than the "have-nots." Do you think people will come to embrace technology by themselves as time passes? What can be done to catalyze this process?

My first thought is, there are always 10% of the people inventing new things and eager for new technologies, a large percentage of people will follow in any stage and a last maybe 10% who don't want to adjust / change. Either they will have to follow for their own good (missing out on services, losing jobs, etc.) or they will find there own way. I don't see that as a problem.

Language differences also contribute to the digital divide, but it is of interest for IT companies to make their products available to more consumers. Has there been any significant effort made to make the Internet and software in general more international? Do you think such efforts could help bridge the digital divide?

I think it is good to make products more international, easy adaptable in language and content. There are many initiatives were organisations experiment with multilanguage applications ( e.g. IICD develop a multilanguage chat tool). When it comes to relevant information and educative software, you need to provide it in the language that is mostly known in the countries you work for. Of course as long as the market rules, some countries are not likely to be serviced, but therefore these government s need to invest (in collaboration with the private sector) and there are of course NGO's working on taylormade tools and software (like ourselves). If poor countries have a significant number of users and programmers / designers, the necessary hard- and software will be made. I think ubunti is a good example: a operation system made for african countries (from South Africa ). It is linex and free. Schoolnet Namibia created its own educative software system. All open source. It is important to know that cultural, educational and technical contexts can be very different and therefore software, hardware, tools, content need to be adjusted and tested. On the other hand, there are so many good practices around that can be adjusted for other regions. It would be good to learn from that and not invent wheels all over. We for instance developed the sexuality and HIV/Aids awareness e-learning environment www.theworldstarts.org for Ugandan teenagers for WPF . It currently is adjusted for Indonesia, Kenya and Thailand. And after 6 months of testing, the Indonesian counterpart only changed one sentence (besides names and places). That made us realise that it is good to test and translate, but that it is possible to create almost universal material.

There's something of an "inventor dilemma" in the IT industry: is it better to produce expensive business computers for the elite, or to produce inexpensive computers for the low income public? Can you please explain where you stand on this?

I don't know the whole picture. From our own experience it takes more than only hardware to implement computers in an area: it is hardware costs, maintenance costs and lack of system knowledge, security (to keep the equipment safe), extremely expensive internet access, computer education in a very broad sense (including basic skills).

Of course cheap, easy to maintain computers and networks, free software, helps! But it would also be a real breakthrough when the prices of connections would finally go down and improve. In some developing countries, people are using pirated software as a response to their inability to afford genuine software. Do you think pirated software has the power to lessen the digital divide? How do you feel about its influence? Do you think free software (ex: the GNU project) would play a role in bridging the digital divide?

Yes, i think open source and free sofware helps people to continue their own learning, keep up with the market and adjust it to their own demands. It is a very high cost to be able to keep up with the market and you can't hardly earn it back with your services. e.g. an average website will only costs around 500 euro, compared to maybe 5000 euro in europe.

Do you think we have done, and continue to do, enough to bridge the digital divide? The way things appear now, do you think the divide will widen or narrow in the future? Why?

We will have to continue to invest more of our energy, investments, technological innovation to bridge it (mostly in Africa). A technical breakthrough could really boost it. In Nairobi for instance so many business concepts waited for the broadband to improve and go down in price. But if you look at the explosive growth of the telecom industry, you see that anything can happen and that the market might be the most effective and sustainable to pick it up and find the gap.

What do you think would be the most effective solutions for the digital divide?

I think two things: infrastructure (more, better, faster, connected computers) and education (taylormade creative education for all, especially youth).