The Dean's List-The Digital Divide

Don't underestimate the importance of alliteration to public policy. The euphonious Digital Divide has caught the fancy of policy wonks as much as the information community. It is a powerful metaphor that has successfully captured the public's attention. It is also a great way to secure federal funding or local sponsorship for a well-intentioned e-project or online community intervention.

The Digital Divide phenomenon is not exactly new. In the late 1980s and early 1990s it was fashionable to talk of the information rich and the information poor. Then along came the public Internet and World Wide Web, which helped make visible the information gap between the "haves" and the "have nots." Measurable differences in ownership of computers, access to information technology, and baseline indicators of Internet-connectedness have powerfully illuminated the gulf between elite and marginal groups, both within and across societies. They bring the rhetoric of info rich/info poor incontestably to life, helping to get the issue of distributive injustice on the radar screens of the people who purportedly matter. The Digital Divide has quickly become a universal shorthand for variations in Internet-related access and usage patterns that are, residually, attributable to socioeconomic factors.

Of course, the Digital Divide is a manipulative misnomer, runs the familiar conservative refrain. It conveniently overlooks the fact that wealth, especially in the United States, is distributed in massively unequal fashion. If BMWs, Rolexes, and Florida penthouses are unequally distributed, why on earth would we expect ownership of ICTs (information and communications technologies) to be less asymmetrical? So, if we're going to bleat on about divisions within society, why not begin by acknowledging that stratification is structural and that there's no especially good reason to single out things digital?

This kind of bluster may work on the hustings, but it is socially myopic. Providing subsidies for Internet access through, say, public libraries is not quite the same thing as doling out BMWs to those on the welfare rolls. ICTs are key elements of our emerging sociotechnical infrastructure: not to have access, whether by choice, lack of means, or because of unenlightened public policy, means that individuals miss out on opportunities for personal and collective growth. Eliminate the divide, and everyone benefits, runs the counterrefrain. Fortunately, it's easier (and considerably cheaper) to bring citizens online than distribute BMWs to the masses.

The federal government has caught the Digital Divide bug in a big way. The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NITA) has published a series of reports on the digital gap, graphically entitled Falling Through the Net. The fourth in this series, subtitled Toward Digital Inclusion, shows, contrary to widespread belief, that the divide between the "haves" and "have nots" is closing rapidly. In August 2000, 58 percent of U.S. households had Internet access. In the same month, 116.5 million Americans were online at some location. The report notes that certain sections of society that have traditionally been beyond the digital pale (e.g., low-income groups, ethnic minorities, women) are making dramatic gains, though some others, notably blacks and Hispanics, remain underrepresented even after income and educational differences are factored into the analysis.

The findings of the NITA report provide cause for cautious optimism and a strong reminder of the role to be played by libraries and other public agencies in facilitating participation among those without the means or technical ability to go online independently. At the same time, the report should encourage us to exercise caution in uncritically evoking the notion of a Digital Divide.

It should also cause us to define our terms in such a way that the multiple bases of marginalization are better acknowledged. For instance, among the excluded may be those who have some kind of disability and for whom assistive technologies and appropriate web page design policies can make a world of difference.

The picture that emerges from the NITA report is not replicated in most other countries. Even in some relatively advanced nations, the gaps are still quite striking. In Britain, it is estimated that more than 60 percent of the richest ten percent of the population have household access to the Internet, while only about six percent of the poorest ten percent have online access. Once we move to the Third World, the digital disparities are mind-boggling; most people don't even have a phone, let alone an online connection, either at work or home.

According to a recent study by Mike Jensen, "The African Internet: A Status Report" (demiurge.wn.apc.org/africa/afstat.htm ), there are about four million Internet users on the continent, of whom 2.5 million are in South Africa. In Africa, one in every 200 persons has Internet access, compared with one in 30 globally, and one in three in advanced economies. It is in this context that the concept of a Digital Divide still has considerable mileage, and one can but hope that the policy experts won't lose interest in the subject once domestic inequalities begin to be eradicated. After all, it makes little sense for a world power to be communicating largely with itself.