Disparity of information in Japan
The world is getting an information society more and more these days, but actually people can’t get the information equally. It happens mainly between developing countries and developed countries, however, even some developed countries are facing this problem. Japan is one of the countries. The reason why this problem occurs is the differences of income, opportunity to use new equipments or talented people. Then, this problem may cause the wage differential, the human rights issues and so on. In addition, it is not easy to live without any information in Japan, so everyone has to consider this problem and find the solutions for it.
In the first place, what is the “digital divide” problem? It is the disparity between people who can use things with new technology and people who can’t do that. This problem is serious in the world now. For example, only 4 in 1000 people have their own personal computer in South Asia, but 585 in 1000 people have it in the US. It is amazing numerical value. Another example, a study in 1999 showed that 86 percent of Internet delivery was surveyed to the 20 large countries, the US, England, Japan and so on. In the contrast, the poor countries can’t adopt these modern technologies because of their poverty or lack of the knowledge of technology, so they are getting poorer and poorer and more and more ignorant about modern information technology. In addition, the difference expands their gap of income and ability of technology more. It means that there are negative chains in the world.
This problem is serious in Japan, too as mentioned earlier. Japanese doesn’t need to care about the lack of life things and their technology is very high level in the world, but each people in Japan have different knowledge about new technology or ability to use these equipments. Some people utilize these things and get more information or make more money. On the other hand, others can’t and get behind the times. In Japan, only 36 in 100 people have their own computer. This number is higher compared with the other countries in Asia, but lower compared in the world. For example, in America, 63 in 100 people have PC. In Japan, this problem is mainly caused by people’s age, wage or living location. Actually, the percentage of spread of Internet is higher on condition that one’s wage is high, he is young and his house is in a large city than the condition that doesn’t so. It will lead the disparities between young and elderly, poor and rich and urban and countries.
So, what’s the solution for this problem? As one of the examples, Japanese government is taking actions now. One of them is “u-Japan” policy. It is being promoted by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications for everyone to receive the IT service whenever and wherever they are and they aim at making ubiquitous society. In concrete term, they are preparing environment that people can use communication with wire or wireless easily and they connect infrastructure all aver Japan. In addition, in order everyone to use the network safely; they will solve the problem of security or privacy. Second example is a NPO, “Information Gap Buster”. They send information about this problem and hold workshops or lecture meetings. Their purpose is to expand the awareness that there are disparities even among Japanese people. In future, these organizations like this NPO take an active part to solve this problem, too.
Then, what should we Japanese do from now on? First, education of IT cultures should be more promoted. Of course, many schools (elementary school, junior high school and high school) have information classes and teach how to use PC. However, this type of education can’t cover the students who are not good at PC and the contents of classes are very superficial, so the knowledge that they get in the classes are meaningless a little. Japanese government should make education of IT cultures better. Second is the improvement of technology. It will cause declines of price of equipments. Actually, the price of personal computers is declined to about one fifth in this 30 years.
It is usual that there are people who like using new things and people who aren’t good at them, but information gap cause social problems, like wage differences. We have to know and consider “digital divide problem” again and cooperate with others to solve the problem not only in the world but also in Japan.
