TELECOMS
within them - you see that virtually all cars and their safety equipment are made to the same standard , which is a 180 centimetre tall man .”
I looked into her claim and , while a US Department of Transportation survey found that crashes involving male drivers are more common and are often more severe than those involving female drivers , women are more likely than males to be killed or injured in crashes of equal severity - which supports Rygaard ’ s next point .
“ If you think again why one demographic is more prone to getting hurt in a car crash versus another , it starts to make more sense . Women of Asian descent , for example , tend to have physical characteristics that don ' t exactly line up very well with those of the 1.8 metre tall white man the car was designed for ,” she explains . “ Of course the car is going to be more difficult to use , and of course safety equipment won ' t be as effective if it was designed for someone who ' s a totally different size and shape .”
It ’ s the same argument for one reason why the digital divide negatively affects the elderly , people of colour , women , rural communities , and the financially disadvantaged ( there are other reasons too ). There are very few old , black women living in rural communities making minimum wage designing the next phase of the 5G rollout .
That may be glib , but a lack of diversity at the design phase is a known source of inherent bias in everything from AI algorithms used in police profiling ( which , in the US , disproportionately target black and hispanic citizens ), to the safety features in a four-door sedan .
“ When you make any technology and put it out into the world , it ' s so important to ask who it fits , who benefits from the way it ' s made , who doesn ' t , and how to fix it . It ' s the same issue with the digital divide ,” says Rygaard . “ If technology only works for people who look and think like the people who made it - and the people who make the technology all look and think the same way - then things will never change . In order to truly bridge the digital divide , we need more diversity in technology . Whether that means gender or any other factor , if we don ' t have diversity then we end up making technology for the sake of technology , and not because technology should make our lives better .”
mobile-magazine . com 59