We got a letter to the editor this week from a woman who was complaining that the wi-fi at one of the public beaches wasn’t very good. All the older staff members at the paper were aghast and making fun of the letter writer for having the audacity to need wi-fi at the beach. I guess you’re just supposed to sit there quietly and not bother anyone. Or sleep.

It made me really think about the discussion we had in class about our digital consumption diaries, and our overall use of digital media in general.  To the letter-writer, who I can only assume was a younger woman, wanting wi-fi at the beach probably seems like a very natural desire. Obviously, her recent trip to the beach turned into a bad experience because she couldn’t access what she needed to.

I think I would relate to her. My phone is never far, and checking it seems to have become an automatic (or compulsive) reaction every few minutes when I’m not engaged in some other activity. I found that even when I was using other media, a desktop, iPad, TV, I would often pick up my phone in the middle of what i was doing and check for messages and emails. Multi-tasking or dependence?

I think sometimes I’m checking my phone without even realizing I’m doing it–it’s just second-nature. We’ve come so far in a such a short time. I remember a time before cellphones (and much digital media). It just reinforced the idea that we take it all for granted–the ability to be connected at any time, anyplace.

The advantages of our digital culture are so great, as we’ve discussed in previous classes, and really should be available to everyone globally. It’s easy to forget that those advantages aren’t shared by people in our own community or far-away communities. We talk about being able to reach out to anyone in the world instantaneously on the web or through social media, but so much of the world’s population, that’s still a far off dream. It’s hard to think about Googling an answer to a question or posting cat photos when your primary concern is feeding your children or finding clean water to drink.

In our breakout groups, planning a conference to address the digital divide, it became apparent that there are things that we can all do to try to close the gap–on both a small and large scale. As digital professionals, we must all strive to bring the advantages of being connected to as many people as we can, be grateful that we are among the people who have access to the digital realm, and never take it for granted.