【分析解答题】

At a recent Internet culture conference at the MIT inCambridge, a local ice-cream shop offered to make a custom flavor for the event.After some discussion, the organizers decided that it should be vanilla ice cream mixed with Nerds candies, "because the Internet is primarily white and nerdy," explainsChrisCsikszentmihalyi, who directs the MITCenter for FutureCivic Medi

A、While a joke, the ice-cream flavor was also a serious commentary on the digital divide that has grown between those who created the Internet--mostly affluent, white, male programmers--and the billions of people with whom they share little in common.
There’s a push among development specialists to provide more people with Internet connections and the assumption that these new Web citizens can then reap the same benefits as communities who’ve long been online. This may not be the case, however. While few people dispute the value of getting the world online, many Internet experts say that current Web content has little relevance and thus little appeal to those whose lifestyle is worlds away from programmers in the United States andEurope. If the majority of the world is to use the Web for more than just a few basic functions, Internet developers must address this gap.
Even in the US, this has proved to be a problem.
A、new study at Northwestern University found that, amongAmericans, those from privileged backgrounds tend to have much higher skill levels and use the Web for more activities than those from less affluent families with equal Internet access. "Just because people gain access doesn’t mean that now they know how to use the Internet," says the authorEszter Hargittai, "Even if we put a lot of effort into connecting more people [the concern is that] even once people obtain access, we will continue to observe considerable variation in their skills and online behavior. "
For those outside the US, crossing the digital divide may seem even more daunting. In the MiddleEast, since 2000, Internet use has grown faster than anywhere else in the worlD、Although there are moreArabs online every day and their language is the world’s fifth most widely spoken, less than 1 percent of Web content is inArabiC、Within the region, Jordan has been one of the most active countries bridging the digital divide. Here the information technology (IT) sector enjoys strong support from KingAbdullah II and makes up 12 percent of the nation’s GDP.According to StartupArabia, a website dedicated to trackingArab tech companies, only the UnitedArabEmirates has surpassed Jordan in the number of start-ups.
"Jordan doesn’t have resources. We don’t have oil; we don’t have any major mineral resources; the only thing we have is education," says Khamis Omar, dean of the IT department at the Princess Sumaya University for Technology inAmman.Despite these successes, Jordan is still on the far side of the perceived chasm. Only 54 percent of Jordanian homes have a personal computer and about 30 percent of people use the Internet. Of those who don’t have computers, about half said they couldn’t afford them while 40 percent said they didn’t need them.
In some regards, it may take decades for the Internet, like other technological revolutions, to take firm root outside its place of origin, says Steven Low, a computer science professor at theCalifornia Institute of Technology in Pasaden
A、"It takes time not only for the technology to mature, but also for [a different] society to learn how to use it and then adapt how you live or how you work to make the most use of it," he says. "That process has been going on in the developed world for the last several decades in terms of IT … but it’s only starting for the developing worlD、" In the meantime, Robert Fadel of the nonprofit One Laptop PerChild says one of the most important things is to continue making technology available to more people so they can find ways to make it applicable to their lives. I