Digital Knowledge Centers: A Way to Reduce the Digital Divide in South America’s Poor Hinterland: A Proposal for the City of Santa Fe, Argentina

The aim of this work is to study the utilization of Digital Knowledge Centers as a way to reduce the digital divide that hits the hinterland of most south american countries. Argentina was chosen because of the knowledge that the proponent has about the country and because its state of development is such that it could assure the “survivability” of the project. Argentina is the 8th biggest country of the world by territory area, therefore it was necessary to pick also one city. After a careful evaluation the city of Santa Fe was chosen, because due to its location, composition of the population, and resources in terms of non profit organizations and voluntarism are sufficient to assure the sustainability of the project. Having a knowledge center such as the one that is being proposed here, other than shorten the digital divide in that specific place; could eventually, due to the potentiality of Argentina, start a series of developments that can propagate to the neighbor provinces creating a virtuous circle that could contribute greatly to the e-literacy of the population thus increasing the e-readiness of the whole area and finally the overall country.