Leila Janah Quotes

Even in the developing parts of the world, kids take to computers like fish to water.

The world's urban poor and the illiterate are going to be increasingly disadvantaged and are in danger of being left behind. The web has added a new dimension to the gap between the first world and the developing world. We have to start talking about a human right to connect.

Soon the digital divide will not be between the haves and the have-nots. It will be between the know-hows and the non-know-hows.

The majority of people who don't have Internet, don't have the Internet because they don't know why they want to use the Internet.

I don't even have my own computer.

A poor man is a man who has not got much money. This may seem a simple and unnecessary description, but in the face of a great mass of modern fact and fiction, it seems very necessary indeed; most of our realists and sociologists talk about a poor man as if he were an octopus or an alligator.

If getting young people computer-literate through putting school systems online is a no-brainer, at least in retrospect, getting older people and those in rural areas online can be a tougher nut to crack.

We know that almost all Americans are avid consumers of technology, but many lack the opportunity to do the creative work that fuels our digital economy.

No, I consider myself computer illiterate.

I was the first to advocate the Web. But I am very troubled by this thing that every kid must have a laptop computer. The kids are totally in the computer age. There's a whole new brain operation that's being moulded by the computer.

I feel great identification with the developing world.

One of the strangest things about life is that the poor, who need the money the most, are the ones that never have it.

I was inspired by the Hole in the Wall project, where a computer with an internet connection was put in a Delhi slum. When the slum was revisited after a month, the children of that slum had learned how to use the worldwide web.

The smug complacency of technology adverts disguises a pretty mixed picture, with too many people not connected, too many passive users of technologies designed for interactive, and far too much talk about empowerment but far too little action to make it happen.

This idea of the digital native in the bedroom taking down a fascist regime and building a billion-dollar company is a very attractive image, but actually, if you look at the research, young people are on the lowest rung of digital opportunity.

Five or ten years ago, when it was clear the Internet was becoming a mainstream phenomenon, it was equally clear that a lot of people were being left out and could be left behind.

So long as confusion reigns, there will be no successful global Internet agenda, only contradiction.

I don't even want to guess at what computer literacy might do to children, except to say that if cyberspace is considered a place, then there are people who are already in it and people who are not in it.

A family living at the poverty level is unlikely to be able to afford a computer at home. Even with a computer, access to the Internet is another significant expense. A child might borrow a book from a public library; but it is not possible to take a computer home.

Accordingly, it is our task to ensure that the Government formulates policies that foster the continued development of the IT sector while also providing for citizens' access to technology and opportunity for economic advancement.

Technology tools such as laptops are the kind of help that we need. A program that provides laptops for all youngsters would close a gap that most of us are not aware of, or will not admit to, which is a tremendous gap in the poor communities.

We want to make it so that anyone, anywhere - a child growing up in rural India who never had a computer - can go to a store, get a phone, get online, and get access to all of the same things that you and I appreciate about the Internet.

In India there are more poor people in three states... than there are in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

Many people see technology as the problem behind the so-called digital divide. Others see it as the solution. Technology is neither. It must operate in conjunction with business, economic, political and social system.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.