Breanna Faye Cultural Invention of the Shanty Town HIS 0443300 01.04.2013
Bridging the Digital Disruption: Technological Impacts on Informal Settlements The prevalence of informal settlements, also known as slums, within urban populations throughout the world has suffered from rapidly chaotic growth, becoming increasingly polarized from the more structured advancement of their surrounding cities. One of the United Nations eight development goals is “achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020.”
1
Even with the increase in awareness of global poverty as an international
agenda, the deficiency of representation in these settlements continues to create a barrier between the informal settlement and the informational city it lies within. Sugata Mitra, a Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, describes informal settlements as “socially and economically remote from the rest of the city. So it’s us and them.”2 The schism between the slum and the city is constantly being addressed, however the continual rise of technology in contemporary society has the potential to bridge that gap by enhancement of self-representation and the inclusion of technology implementation and
1
Warah, Rasna. Divided city: information poverty in Nairobi’s slums. The Communication Initiative Network.2004. Accessed December 20, 2012 from http://www.comminit.com/en/node/212416. 2 Mitra, Sugata. Sugata Mitra Shows Kids How to Teach Themselves. TED Talk Video. Accessed on December 30, 2012 from http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html.