Topic 6 - The Digital Divide
Define the term "demographic"
A particular section of a population.
Define the term "artificial intelligence"
A computer system designed to simulate human intelligence.
List the five main impacts on the digital divide.
City vs rural living
Technology educated vs uneducated
Older people vs younger people
More industrially developed countries vs less
Different socio-economic groups
List the six components of an expert system.
- user interface
- knowledge base
- inference engine
- knowledge base editor
- explanation system
- methods of output
Give three ways you could reduce the digital divide in rural areas.
The quality of the infrastructure in rural areas could be improved.
Many governments around the world are working with internet providers and offering incentives to improve the infrastructure in rural areas.
In certain rural locations, the practicality of building infrastructure capable of high-speed internet can be very challenging. This is normally because the task and cost of building the infrastructure needed is so large.
One solution to this is to use satellite technologies. This limits the amount of infrastructure that needs to be developed whilst still providing access to the internet.
List three uses of expert systems.
Medical diagnosis
Car engine fault diagnosis
A digital opponent in games (e.g. chess)
Providing financial planning and investment advice
Providing insurance planning advice
Plant and animal identification
Planning and scheduling routes for delivery vehicles
Mineral prospecting
Elinah lives in a village in Kenya. She makes beautiful woven baskets that can be used for a range of purposes, including storage of items and as a plant holder.
Elinah sells her products to local customers and tourists. The tourists often say to her that they wish they could by her products online.
Elinah would like to be able to sell her products online. She know how to set up a website and distribution channel, but the internet access to her village is very limited.
Explain the impact of the digital divide on Elinah.
Elinah lives in a less industrially developed area.
She has limited access to the internet so this limits her ability to sell online.
Not allowing her to expand her business.
If she lived somewhere with better internet access she would have more opportunities to expand her business.
Give two advantages and two disadvantages of an expert system.
Advantages:
Expert systems can provide answers to questions that are outside the knowledge that you currently have.
Expert systems can aid professional people by prompting them and guiding them to look at areas of knowledge they may not have considered or remembered.
Expert systems are consistent in the responses they produce as they arrived at in a logical way.
Expert systems can be used at any time, so you do not need to contact another person who may have the knowledge at an unsuitable time.
Expert systems can sometimes arrive at a solution to a problem quicker than a human would.
Disadvantages:
Expert systems do not have the intuition that humans have. This means that their response can only be a logical one and may not be useful.
Expert systems are only as good as the rules and data they were provided with. If there are errors in the data or rules, then this will provide incorrect results.
Expert systems are expensive to create. Many experts need to be consulted and a high level of skill is required to build the component parts.
Expert systems cannot adapt a great deal to their environment and may require the knowledge base to be edited in order to do this.
Expert systems need to be kept up-to-date. If the data is outdated the system will provide inaccurate results.
Many older people struggle with the use of technology. Give reasons why they struggle and how this can be prevented.
Technology has developed a huge amount over the last 50 years. This means that some people have grown up with technology as an integral part of their life and others have witnessed the development of technology, along with experience of a world without it.
Some younger people have only ever known the use of smartphones and the internet. This means that social media has been their main understanding of communication with the outside world.
Some older people have known other methods of communication and may have preferred those, but this group are now finding that older methods of communication are becoming increasingly dated.
This can cause a divide in the ability of a younger and an older generation to communicate.
Younger people may feel much more confident using technology as they have far more experience with it.
It is often their “go to” resource for many aspects of their life, including communication, entertainment and research.
Older people may feel less confident about using technology because the have experienced a world before smartphones and the internet and have used alternative methods. These include landline telephone, written letters and using libraries for research.
As older people have known other methods, this can cause resentment if they are presented with the need to use technology to complete a task.
They may feel that the use of technology makes the task much more difficult and this can also affect their confidence in using technology for other tasks in the future.
Reducing:
One of the biggest barriers to older people using technology is likely to be their fear of it. They will have more familiar ways to do things with which they are more comfortable.
They may feel that they are too old to learn how to use technology and see it more of a young person thing.
What they may not see is that the use of technology can be hugely beneficial to older people.
As older people become less mobile and are able to get outside their homes less frequently they can start to become cut off and feel isolated.
By being able to use platforms such as social media, they can improve their feelings of isolation and have regular contact with their friends and family.
Incentives to get older people to see the advantages of technology are developing in many countries.
Explain how an expert system can be used for mineral prospecting.
Minerals can be very precious, geologists can spend a long time trying to source them.
An expert system called PROSPECTOR was one of the first expert systems developed to aid geologists in exploring for minerals.
Digging for minerals can be very expensive, so companies want to be sure that minerals will be present when they break ground.
PROSPECTOR can be used to calculate the probability of minerals being present in a certain location.