Digital Divide - Mapping The Digital Divide

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.