My recent response to a classmate regarding the “24-hour access” question is below:
The one big question that needs to be asked–and it seems to be based on our pervasive and perhaps inculcated nature of being “who we are” and “where we are”–is “what does 24 hour accessibility mean?” For many of us, this may in fact be possible, partly because we are all participants in LEEP, so it is assumed that we all have accessible computers. But this is not necessarily true. Some students use the computers at work, because they don’t have home computers; and then there is the wider portrait of “who in society owns a computer.” Consider that roughly 87% of the world’s population does NOT own a car; now a car is not a computer, but computers do cost something. Even within the United States, I would be surprised if more than 30% of the population owned a computer. World-wide, I’ve seen numbers between 3-5% (for example, see: http://www.omni-ts.com/newsroom/linux-software-environmentally-friendly.html). Even if 30% of Americans owned computers, there are so many other issues to examine–including literacy, percentage of readers, types of readers; so, 24-hour access is the brainchild of digital age, and the step-child of the digital divide.
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So what can we take away from this? There is much to be said about the burgeoning e-book or e-text. My main concern (and I hate to sound so socialistic or like a throwback to early Leninism!) is about the basic accessibility. I don’t think e-books/texts shall “infiltrate” the market for many, many years. The issue of their usage will be basically curtailed at the public library door: if you need some sort of device to read a book (i.e. e-book), it adds cost and technology needs that many people just can’t afford. So, there is much more to think about here.
Theobiblos: Religion, Books, and Academic Technology 
July 1, 2006 at 5:10 pm
I think your perspective is valuable and (at least indirectly) may relate to your extensive experience in living outside of the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world. Or am I wrong? What do you think?
July 6, 2006 at 2:39 pm
I think a good part of my perspective is indeed based on my experience abroad. I see the problems that “we” (as supposedly the most technically advanced and financially viable citizens–whatever this means!) have with access of information, and I can’t even begin to imagine what people, who don’t even have electricity might be thinking. But even more, if we are speaking of our own country, there are hundreds of thousands of students, who simply do not own computers. Even full time employees with decent salaries have difficulty in purchasing computers (costing upwards of $2,500). And then the information divide: do many lower income households know about “refurbished” or second-hand gifted computers at local, grassroots organizations? If people don’t know about computers that they can procure for $150 somewhere, how will they “become connected?” So, it is not just a global situation, but local (to re-use the old dichotomy); and it is not just a digital divide, but an informational divide.
-Anthony