Digital Divide

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DIGITAL DIVIDE

In the beginning, the Internet, and particularly the World Wide Web, was extolled as a powerful force toward the democratization of information and, ultimately, of politics and economics. This was the idealistic vision of the Web's founder, Tim Berners-Lee. By placing such a wealth of information and opportunity at individuals' fingertips, the Web, according to its most ardent supporters, was to act as the great societal leveler. While some aspects of that vision may have leaked through, most observers note that the technology has taken a very different course, and has led to what is popularly known as the digital divide.

Both inside the United States and on the global level, the gulf between those individuals, families, organizations, and businesses that enjoy access to the Internet and those that do not constitutes the digital divide. The seeming ubiquity of the Internet in U.S. culture in the early 2000s seemed to gloss over the lingering digital divide. Indeed, amidst the hype surrounding the New Economy, it became difficult for many Americans to recognize that the majority of the world's population had yet to make a phone call, much less log on to the Internet. And while the cost of personal computers and Internet software and access has inched downward since the mid-1990s, the digital divide persisted in various forms and with various implications.

MAPPING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

Discussion of a gap between the Internet haves and have-nots formally began with the publication of "Falling Through the Net," a report issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1995. At first associated primarily with racial disparities, the general tenor of the discourse gradually broadened to include a wider array and matrix of social indicators, particularly those related to class. New York-based Jupiter Communications found the greatest disparity in Internet usage to be along income—rather than racial—lines. While wealth distribution is very strongly correlated to race and ethnicity in the United States, analysis of the digital divide by the early 2000s tended to consider a more holistic analysis of inequalities.

The digital divide, according to some observers, isn't a qualitatively new phenomenon; rather, it is the extension of age-old inequalities and social discrepancies into the Information Age. Some sociologists viewed the digital divide as a modern extension of chronic unemployment and lack of access to basic social services. With financial transactions; social, political, and economic news; and, increasingly, the pace of social life moving at Internet speed, the digital divide carries the possibility of exacerbating the deep economic divisions existing in U.S. society.

The U.S. Department of Commerce in late 2000 reported that 12.7 percent of Americans earning less than $15,000 per year had access to the Internet in their homes, compared with 77.7 percent of those making more than $75,000 a year. The Journal of Housing and Community Development noted that racial divisions intersected with income levels; 23 percent of African-Americans and Hispanics combined maintained home Internet access, while 46 percent of Caucasians were connected at home. Significantly, however, those low-income households that did have access to the Internet were relatively likely to use it to their economic advantage. For instance, those earning less than $15,000 were the most likely—at about 25 percent—to use the Web for employment searches.

The evolution of the digital divide was a mixed bag. Between 1998 and 2000, according to the Department of Commerce, African-American Internet access rose from 11.2 percent to 23.5 percent; while Hispanic access jumped similarly jumped from 12.6 percent to 23.6 percent. While this doubling of access for these groups was an important gain, it still represented a significant gap between these groups and white Americans. Over the longer term, the problem was even more acute. Between 1984 and 1998, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage gap in computer ownership between the highest and lowest income groups expanded from 20 percent to 64 percent.

The digital divide in the United States also encompassed a geographical disparity, primarily between the urban and suburban populations on the one hand and rural inhabitants on the other. According to Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, nonmetropolitan residents had a lot to gain from digital technologies since they stand to mitigate some of the disadvantages of geographical isolation, such as their relatively great distance from markets. Despite the universal-access provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, however, access to high-speed networks was extremely limited in most rural areas at the start of the 2000s, particularly because Internet service providers (ISPs) can realize greater returns on their investments in densely populated metropolitan regions.

A study by Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly concluded that, despite the more optimistic predictions of the Internet as a great societal equalizer and force for democratization, the innovations and advantages wrought by digital and information technology were likely to remain closely bound to other social indicators, such as income and education levels, race and ethnicity, and age.

In a global economy driven by knowledge and information in which the Internet is the increasingly dominant medium of interaction, Internet speed, access, use, and fluency are staples of the ability to successfully compete. With competition increasingly based on quick, information-based innovation, companies that failed to incorporate the Internet into their core operations risked placing themselves at a severe competitive disadvantage.

The tension between addressing the digital divide on the one hand and taking advantage of what the Internet had to offer on the other sometimes lead to difficult situations. Many companies, in the interest of creating value and attracting customers via their Web sites, began offering special Web-only deals, which prompted some analysts, concerned with widening the digital divide, to cry foul. At the heart of the Information Age in Silicon Valley, meanwhile, the point was drawn out by the fact that, according to Computerworld, Latinos and African-Americans were underrepresented in information-technology companies by about 50 percent. The potential implications for those on the "wrong" side of the digital divide can be serious, according to some analysts. As cultural and economic life grows more and more bound to the Internet and digital technology, those outside of the loop may grow increasingly isolated from the mainstream of society, creating or exacerbating serious rifts that can rupture tranquility.

In addition to the technical and economic aspects of the digital divide, some analysts have pointed to the deepening psychological and ideological components, whereby individuals not on the cusp of the New Economy and technological innovations find themselves frustrated and remote from the endless barrage of media coverage that so popularized Internet culture. Stories of dot.com millionaires, breakthrough digital technologies, and the wonders of the New Economy, such observers note, may have intensified the already existing divide between the Net-savvy and the Net-illiterate.

Still others look at the digital divide as a marketing problem stemming from varying cultural attitudes toward technology. According to MC Technology Marketing Intelligence, the divide has as much to do with the degree to which groups perceive technology as a central component in their lives as to levels of access along the lines of social indicators. These perceptions feed and are fed by the nature of marketing campaigns, which tend to gravitate toward those groups that have consistently been the "tech-haves" rather than the "tech-have-nots." Some companies, therefore, began to make a concerted effort to tap the traditionally underserved markets. Gateway, for example, launched an extensive campaign to build brand loyalty in the growing Hispanic community, pitching itself as a manufacturer of affordable computers catering to Hispanics.

Whatever the precise explanations and implications, the issue was taken seriously enough in political circles to warrant close attention. President Bill Clinton launched a crusade to close the digital divide in December 1999, and featured the problem in his State of the Union address a month later. The Clinton Administration was particularly concerned with the effects of the digital divide in the nation's school systems. If high standards of learning were to be increasingly associated with access to the Internet, then deep disparities in Internet access in schools imposed fundamental inequities upon children. By the end of the 20th century, over 90 percent of U.S. schools were wired for the Internet, though the extent of the access still varied considerably. Meanwhile, America's Network in 2001 listed the digital divide as the most pressing problem faced by the Federal Communications Commission under President George W. Bush.

There were, however, some holdouts when it came to addressing the digital divide. Indeed, some refused to accept that there was a problem at all, in sisting that market forces had lowered the prices of digital technology and Internet access to the point that just about everyone could log on to the Internet if they so desired. According to such observers, the remedy lay not in any governmental policies or public investments but in the further unleashing of market forces. The Consumer Electronics Association, for example, held that digital technology was on its way to overwhelming market penetration, and that there wasn't a genuine crisis but a situation more likely born of the political realm.

ADDRESSING THE DIVIDE

An issue generating extremely mixed feelings was the level of responsibility companies feel, or should feel, in remediating the digital divide. According to an InformationWeek survey of 500 information-technology and business professionals, direct business involvement in addressing the digital divide was far from standard. While 77 percent of the respondents registered personal concern with the digital divide, only one-third reported that their companies maintained programs to enhance computer access in their communities. There were pragmatic reasons why companies might choose to help bridge the divide. For instance, running or sponsoring educational programs in conjunction with local schools or training institutes can provide a source of income and help nurture strong links between the company and the community. Moreover, offering space for learning computer skills can contribute to the supply of skilled computer workers.

Access, however, was only part of the problem, and bringing the Internet to traditionally underserved areas still left several stones unturned. Once access is available, the task of developing technological "fluency" begins. For example, fluency with the Internet involves not only the ability to surf the Web and download files, but the knowledge of how to create a successful Web site and develop grass-roots communication networks. As a result, technological education will be just as important as reading and writing in a world connected via the Internet and where cyberspace coexists on a par with physical-world interaction. A popular approach among policy makers, including the Clinton Administration, in the late 1990s and early 2000s was the creation of community technology centers, at which individuals of all ages can attend courses and use on-site computer resources for training, research, and personal use.

There were disagreements, of course, as to just what lay in store for the digital divide. While the U.S. Commerce Department expected the gap between ethnic groups to widen by 2005, Jupiter Communications predicted that in this category the divide would narrow. Jupiter held that by the middle of the decade, household income would be the leading indicator in assessing the digital divide, reporting that only 21 percent of households earning less than $15,000 would be online, while 78 percent of households bringing in at least $75,000 would enjoy Internet access. Jupiter expected the ethnic and racial gaps to remain, but in extremely diminished form, with 64-percent access for African Americans, 68 percent for Hispanics, 84 percent for Asian Americans, and 76 percent for Caucasians.

THE GLOBAL DIVIDE

The global dynamics of Internet access were expected to undergo some drastic changes through the first decade of the 21st century. While the United States and other western countries led the way in access at the start of the decade, by 2010 the two largest Internet user communities were likely to be China and India, as Internet availability begins to catch up to those countries' populations.

In booming Internet markets, such as Asia, internal disparities play a significant role as well. The Asian Development Bank (ADB), in its report Asian Development Outlook 2000, cautioned against the long-term effects of the limited and uneven development of information technology in the region, noting that, absent the adequate physical and network infrastructure, underdeveloped countries and communities of Asia risked being left even further behind their more developed neighbors when the Internet-based economy really takes hold. Among some key figures highlighting the regional divide, as reported in Asian Business, were the telephone and computer penetration rates in the Philippines, at only 3.7 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively. By way of comparison, the significantly more developed Hong Kong boasted telephone and computer penetration rates of 55.8 percent and 25.4 percent, respectively. Moreover, only 5 percent of public-school students and teachers in the Philippines enjoyed Internet access.

The report concluded that Asian countries should implement policies that encourage the development of a modern telecommunications infrastructure and eliminate regulations that inhibit private investment for such projects. A broad telecommunications and information-technology policy forum was conducted by the Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) eAsean Task Force, which formed in 1999. Meanwhile, the ADB insisted, as important as the technological infrastructure is the development of educational infrastructure and human resources so that the mass of the population can contribute to and take advantage of the blooming Internet culture.

In other regions, such as the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, overall penetration was even lower, and the institutional and infrastructural barriers to bridging the digital divide were generally higher. Precarious political systems and little tradition of a strong, modern industrial and information economy made the building of Internet-ready populations and infrastructures exceptionally difficult to negotiate, though many countries had made important moves in that direction. Some leading companies from more developed nations, moreover, have viewed the Internet development of those regions as a potentially beneficial undertaking, and have initiated donation programs to send computer equipment to and wire schools and community centers in those countries. For example, IBM maintained programs aimed at not only delivering equipment but also at providing hands-on technical training in such countries as Brazil, Mexico, and Vietnam.

Only about 5 percent of the world's population was online as of 2000, and many observers saw this discrepancy as the tip of a much more ominous iceberg. With half the Earth's inhabitants living on less than $2 a day, activists, philanthropic organizations, and, increasingly, businesses and policy makers saw the growing disparities highlighted by the digital divide as the fuel for explosive global instability and potential upheaval that could have severe human and economic costs. President Joaquim Alberto Chissano of Mozambique, for instance, pointed out that the number of Internet hosts in New York City exceeded those in all of Africa. Recognizing such dangers, the Group of Seven (G-7) wealthiest industrialized nations, at their 2000 summit in Okinawa, placed the digital divide on their planning agenda for the first time. At Davos, Switzerland that same year, the World Economic Forum assumed a positive stance, pointing to the digital divide as a "digital opportunity," whereby the remediation of the divide could be a springboard for more systematic reparation of societal inequalities. And, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review, major technology companies such as Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, recognizing the emerging difficulties posed by the digital divide, sponsored an international conference addressing digital inequality.

Among political and business leaders gathered at the United Nations State of the World Forum in 2000, there was an emerging consensus that governments must stress education and technological infrastructure in their national strategies in order to ward off at least the worst excesses of the digital divide. In many countries, the problems to surmount are far more deeply based, including the uprooting of entrenched gender and ethnic discrimination and the quelling of political unrest. But most leaders agreed that the basic issues behind the digital divide were very real and a pressing issue of fundamental social and economic equality that needed to be addressed.