Digital Towns

Book excerpt: Intro -- Foreword -- Acknowledgement -- Contents -- About the Authors -- Abbreviations -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1: Defining, Rationalising and Measuring Digital Towns -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Digital Society-Key Concepts and Terms -- 1.2.1 What Do We Mean by Digital? -- 1.2.2 Mainstream vs Frontier Technologies -- 1.3 What Is a Town? -- 1.4 The Urban-Rural Digital Divide -- 1.5 Rationalising and Defining Digital Towns -- 1.6 The Need for a Discrete Digital Town Measurement Framework -- 1.7 Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 2: The Digital Citizen -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 The Digital Divide -- 2.2.1 The Grey Digital Divide -- 2.2.2 The Income Digital Divide -- 2.2.3 The Education Digital Divide -- 2.2.4 The Gender Digital Divide -- 2.2.5 The Digital Divide and Other Vulnerable Parts of Society -- 2.3 Digital Literacy -- 2.4 New Forms of Work and Rural Towns -- 2.4.1 Remote Working -- 2.4.2 The Gig Economy -- 2.4.3 The Sharing Economy -- 2.5 Measuring Individual and Household Access and Use of Digital Technologies -- 2.6 Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 3: Digital Public Services -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 What Do We Mean by Digital Public Services? -- 3.3 E-Government -- 3.4 E-Health -- 3.5 Open Data -- 3.6 Measuring Digital Public Services -- 3.7 Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 4: The Digital Economy and Digital Business -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 What Is the Digital Economy? -- 4.3 What Is Digital Business? -- 4.4 Benefits and Challenges of Digital Technologies for Businesses -- 4.5 Measuring Digital Business -- 4.6 Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 5: Digital Technologies and Civil Society -- 5.1 Introduction -- 5.2 Defining Civil Society -- 5.3 The Role of Civil Society -- 5.4 Digital Technologies and Civil Society -- 5.4.1 Mainstream Technologies -- 5.4.2 Frontier Technologies.