Challenges To Narrow Digital Divide

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

2.0 INTRODUCTION

This chapter focuses on a literature review that focusing more on the development of research. Literature review focuses on research that have similarity with what we want to develop. This research will helps to gain more knowledge and ideas regarding the project that will develop.

2.1 ICT DEVELOPMENT

ICT stands for Information and Communication Technology. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is not a new phenomenon in Malaysia. It started with a phone until the internet was introduced in Malaysia. Since then, Malaysia continues to forge ahead in developing ICT applications and services for the convenience of residents (Musa, Bahaman, Hayrol Azril, D’Silva, & Jusang, 2011). ICT is a tool that help people to communicate effectively, overcome limitation of time, empowers people by providing knowledge and information, opportunity to improve people’s life and learning opportunity (Abu Samah, D’ Silva, Mohamed Shaffril, & Abu Hassan, 2010). Example of ICT devices are telephone, computer, internet, broadband, network and other wireless communication.

2.2 DIGITAL DIVIDE

Nearly half the world's population has access to ICT however had no standardized distribution of resources around the world. Even on the same continent, but there are different levels of ICT access between countries and regions. ICT plays an important role in economic growth, social and imbalances in the world.

The digital divide refers to the gap between those who can access ICT to those unable to access ICT (Smyth, 2006). In addition, the digital divide refers to when there are differences of ICT facilities enjoyed by urban residents and rural residents.

2.2.1 Challenges to Narrow Digital Divide in Rural Area

There are many reasons why the existence of the digital divide. According to (Hosseini., Niknami., & Chizari., 2009) among the challenges facing the rural population is divided into several parts such as organizational, financial, technical, social, regulatory and human. In terms of organization, lack of interest from the highest levels of management, focus more on the risks to use ICT, the lack of service centers and so on.

In financial terms, the problem of the high cost of Internet access, it costs a lot to buy equipment and software as well as less investment whether the public or private sector. In addition, technical factors also affect the use of ICT in rural areas are less hardware, low bandwidth, lack of appropriate infrastructures, lack of software, the lack of volume websites, telecommunications systems are weak and there is a lack of expertise.

Not only that, the challenges faced in terms of of social are having phobia with technology, have a bad impression of modern technology, lack of understanding about the benefits and cons of ICT, lack of interaction and prejudices of the benefits of ICT. While there is also a factor caused by regulatory such as the lack of regulation of intellectual property rights, lack of policy support, the inadequate regulation, strict rules and outdated.

In addition, there are challenges in the use of ICT in rural areas involving human lack of knowledge and expertise among the rural population, the negative view of additional expertise, knowledge of the weak ICT, lack of expertise in the field of ICT and cope with the complexity of ICT learning and more confident with existing education.

2.3 WEB

The World Wide Web (WWW) continues to grow at an unpredictable rate. The first decade of the new millennium has seen the birth of so-called "Web 2.0" services through which large scale of data were generated. It's been known as the collection of globally distributed text and multimedia documents, files and other network services in order to create an application or a system that can bring and store information and can be retrieved quickly by the user (Strathern, Awadh, Chokshi, Shafiq, & Alhajj, 2011).

2.2.1 History

The function of the internet at first is to globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone can access the data and programs. After several years, the Word Wide Web (WWW) have been developed that support multimedia and contain a collection of linked document.

Web appears as the source of the information retrieval day by day, because of that the web browser being developed. With the use of a web browser, the user can retrieve the information quickly. New services also been introduced such as Blogs and this is a popular source because a large amount of information can be posted and accessed every day. Other popular services also popular among user are video sharing and Micro blogging services.

2.2.2 Platform

Nowadays, there are many web browsers being used by the user, for example Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari and others. The web browser is one of the software application that use to view the information from World Wide Web. It can execute in any of the operating system such as Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Android.

The web browser will encode every page of the web using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) that will identify all the content and format of the document when it displayed. This document will be stored in file system according to their pathname.

2.3 CONTENT

There are many resources available in most telecenters for reference. However, resources are not the same in all telecenters. Amenities sharing is very important for the development of society, especially in rural areas. There of plenty of content available to the rural population. But not all content is appropriate to the rural population, especially the farmers and self-employed. Excessive content in a website is not suitable for the rural population. Therefore, the need for new content relevant to rural people is very important. Not only the content they offer something of interest, but more user friendly and have appropriate content for them. The main focus of content development is not only to attract the rural population to use but more to the content development goals (Mohammed, 2012).

2.3.1 Multimedia

Multimedia is a combination of

2.3 TOOLS REQUIREMENT

2.3.1 Apache server

The Apache web server is one of the most popular web servers that play an important role in the growth of World Wide Web. At first, It's been designed for Unix environments. Later, it is being used by other operating system like Windows.

This server provides a full range of features, including CGI, SSL, and virtual domains. It also supports plug-in modules for extensibility. This software is open source (free), distributed by Apache Software Foundation.

2.3.2 MySQL

MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) that based on Structured Query Language or SQL. This database has been made its source code available under the terms of the GNU General Public License and be owned by Oracle Corporation.

MySQL also open sources software that requires a full-featured database management system that can use MySQL. These applications are TYPO3, Joomla, WordPress, phpBB, Drupal and other.

2.5.3 Adobe Dreamweaver CS3

Formerly known as Macromedia Dreamweaver, is a propriety web development application created by Macromedia, and now developed by Adobe System. It is the editing software and provides support for website creation and management.

2.5.4 PHP

PHP also been known as Hypertext PreProcessor. It is an open source and a tool for making interactive and dynamic web pages. It is a scripting language that is especially suited for web development and also can be embedded into HTML.