Digital Divide
The difference between those who have access to modern information technology and those who do not.
What is the Digital Divide?
This phrase describes the reality that nearly all information today is represented as bits and can be copied perfectly.
What is the Digital Explosion?
This term refers to the ability to solve a problem by distributed tasks among a large group of online volunteers.
What is crowdsourcing?
This is the default legal protection for any original work (song, code, image) as soon as it is created.
What is copyright?
This is information about an individual that can be used to identify them, such as a Social Security number.
What is PII (Personally Identifiable Information)?
This group of people often faces a "secondary" digital divide because websites are not designed to work with screen readers.
Who are people with disabilities?
When a computer model makes unfair decisions because the data used to train it was skewed, it is called this.
What is algorithmic bias?
This specific type of project allows everyday people to contribute to scientific research by collecting data in their own backyards.
What is Citizen Science?
These public licenses allow authors to specify how others can "remix" or "share" their work without asking for permission.
What are Creative Commons licenses?
These small text files are stored on your computer by websites to track your login state and browsing habits.
What are cookies?
High costs of devices and monthly data plans represent this specific type of barrier to the digital world.
What is an economic barrier?
Data about data—such as the time a photo was taken or the location of a post—is known as this.
What is metadata?
This model of software development allows the public to view, edit, and improve the source code.
What is Open Source?
This controversial law prohibits the act of "breaking" digital locks (DRM) on protected media.
What is the DMCA?
This security method uses two different forms of identification (like a password and a text code) to grant access.
What is Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA/2FA)?
In many developing nations, this type of infrastructure is being skipped entirely in favor of mobile (cellular) networks.
What is landline (or wired) infrastructure?
This occurs when an algorithm prioritizes content that confirms a user's existing beliefs, creating an "echo chamber."
What is confirmation bias?
To ensure crowdsourced data is valid, researchers often use this method of having multiple people check the same entry.
What is peer verification (or data validation)?
This legal principle allows people to use small parts of copyrighted work for criticism, news reporting, or teaching.
What is Fair Use?
This type of encryption uses a public key to scramble data and a private key to unscramble it.
What is Public Key (Asymmetric) Encryption?
This term refers to the disparity in the speed and quality of internet, even when basic access is available.
What is bandwidth inequality?
This is the process of stripping identifying information from a dataset, though it is often reversible with enough data.
What is anonymization?
This is a major benefit of crowdsourcing: it allows for the processing of data at a scale that would be too expensive for one lab.
What is scalability?
This is the term for a work whose copyright has expired, making it free for everyone to use without restriction.
What is the Public Domain?
This is the term for the trail of data you leave behind every time you use the internet.
What is a digital footprint?