The Digital Divide in my country

Infrastructure and public services in my country are on high level, including internet accessibility. Internet is almost in all schools and libraries and the government runs several projects to make it better. That means the internet should be available almost in every village. Than yet, thanks to telephone operators it is possible to get some connection anywhere.

Czech Republic still hasn’t got such a high number of broadband connections as in Germany, Britain or Estonia, but it is getting better very fast, everybody wants to be no-line. Nowadays, about 60 percent of people are connected to internet, 2/5 of them broadband.

There is one specific group in Czech Republic, which has got often problems to integrate into society (and vice versa). Gypsies are said to be lazy, bad workers, pick-pocketers and many people don’t like them, because they have a lot of children and get high welfare benefits. Unlike Vietnamese, or Chinese communities Gypsies really very rarely work, run any businesses and educate themselves.

Despite of many government programmes and NGOs activities most of them stagnate and prefer “unchained” way of live inside their communities. Internet penetration among Gypsy families is very low, close to zero. But it is not only technology gap, but social gap in general.

Typical digital divide case in CZE is based on age. Elderly people (60+) in my country usually don’t use internet and often computer at all. There are not many projects concerned with this issue, but the main reason is, in my opinion, the socialist era. Most of their live people weren’t forced and motivated to be creative, think more than was requested and adopt new technologies. After Velvet Revolution everything changed, many people lost or had to change their job and suddenly the world started move faster. Till this time many old people hasn’t faced up to this changes, not only with internet era.