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What Digital Divide?
Politicians from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, on Capitol Hill, to the other end, by the White House, are scrambling to see who can build the best bridge over the digital divide, or the gap between those who have computers and Internet access and those who do not. However, it's unclear whether they're all aiming to cross the same chasm or even to the same side.
The process of stripping the issue down into a pat sound bite, coupled with competing agendas, has turned 'digital divide' into a phrase that means many things to different people.
Depending on the forum, the digital divide is the gap between any or all of the following: rich and poor, minority and white, rural and urban, narrowband and broadband or small business and large business.
And there are still others who doubt the phenomenon even exists.
President Clinton has said he firmly believes there is a problem and has proposed billions of dollars in new programs ranging from more technology training for teachers to community technology centers to free computers for low-income individuals.
"I think this is a big deal, and as I said in the State of the Union address, if we don't do this now, when we've got the strongest economy in our lifetime, when will we ever get around to it?" Clinton said during an early-March visit to Silicon Valley. "I think businesses must work with us to make sure we close the fault line between those who have access to computers and to the Internet and those who do not."
Jesse Jackson jumped into the fray earlier this month when he opened a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition branch office in the heart of Silicon Valley. Butch Wing, who runs the Silicon Valley Project, said the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is taking a top-down approach to the digital divide by targeting the people who set industry policy: high-tech CEOs and boards of directors.
"Most people talk about access, but we're looking at it in a more top-to-bottom way, " he said. "Inclusion begins at the level of the board of directors. They set the policies. We're looking at inclusion of emerging communities in the high-tech industry as a whole."
But the issue isn't limited to Democrats. Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-MI, touted a bill he introduced last year, S. 542, to give tax breaks to companies donating old computers to schools as a digital divide remedy. The Senate overwhelmingly approved the bill's language as an amendment to legislation that would give tax benefits to families saving for education expenses.
"We must do more in the area of closing the digital divide," Abraham said on the Senate floor in support of his provision.
And Republicans representing rural states have pushed the issue for years to ensure that their states are not left out of the New Economy. Through the efforts of the so-called "Farm Team" in the Senate, rural Democrats and Republicans pushed to include a provision in the 1996 Telecommunications Act that requires the Federal Communications Commission to assess whether advanced telecommunications services are reaching underserved and hard-to-reach parts of the country.
Greg Rohde, who heads the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), said his agency's assumptions about the digital divide are not political and are based on census numbers. A NTIA report released last summer — Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide — found major gaps between technology haves and have nots along economic, racial and geographic lines.
The NTIA study found that urban households with incomes over $75,000 are more than 20 times more likely to have home Internet access than rural households at the lowest income levels. It also found that whites are more likely to have access to the Internet from home, than blacks or Hispanics have from any location, and that at almost every income level, households in rural areas are less likely to own computers than households in urban or central city areas.
Rohde advocates expanding the current universal service program — fees collected from telecommunications providers to subsidize telephone service in underserved areas — to cover high-speed Internet access.
"The marketplace does not reach into every single area. It's economics. The law says everyone will keep pace," he added referring to the 1996 act.
But some in the high-tech industry say the market has worked to reduce the cost of computers and Internet access, and that areas without access now will get it in the future when there is demand for it. On that basis, John Palafoutas, vice president for domestic policy for the American Electronics Association, doubts that a digital divide exists.
"It's a nice political slogan rather than a comment with content," he said. "The market is really taking care of the perceived problems. When you can get a damned good computer for 500 bucks, I don't know what they're talking about."
Palafoutas added that the industry is working to address underlying issues, such as education, to better equip individuals for a technology-based economy. He noted that while the e-rate — federally mandated subsidies that give schools and libraries discounted Internet access — has helped to wire nearly every school, students still lack basic skills.
"The single biggest indicator for success is knowing how to read and write," he said. "Our companies are working on a lot of educational programs."
Robert Johnson, CEO of Black Entertainment Television, doesn't buy into the digital divide concept either.
"Digital divide. It's good alliteration," he said at a National Press Club speech last month. "But I'm not sure it actually exists except in the minds of those customers who have yet to discover that there's something rich and rewarding on the Internet for them. We believe that the digital divide exists in African-Americans, not because of economics, but because of attitude."
Johnson's company recently launched BET.com to fill what it sees as a content gap on the Internet. While he concedes there are some economic barriers preventing a number of African Americans from going online, he said the root of those problems runs deeper than having access to a computer or the Internet.
"That divide is a divide that's not only digital, that divide is health, that divide is education, that divide is housing," he said. "But that divide is something that will have to be addressed at a very global scale by the government, in addition to corporate support, but principally, that's not a divide that Black Entertainment Television can bridge."
Anthony Wilhelm, who heads the Washington, DC-based Benton Foundation's Communications Policy and Practice program, said the digital divide has become a "catch-all" phrase for different groups to push their agendas. He said the digital divide is a multi-faceted social issue that could ultimately determine how people participate in the economy and even carry out their civil responsibilities though online voting. The foundation is working with companies like America Online to develop an online clearinghouse of information for businesses and community groups trying to expand access to new technologies.
"People are looking at a small slice and making evaluations based on that," he said. "People need to look at the issue more comprehensively, and we need to define what we mean in specific circumstances."
While interests on both sides of the issue will continue to debate whether there is a technology gap that must be closed, the terminology used to describe the digital divide has reached "buzzword" status in Washington.
"I don't like the term ‘digital divide' because it's become a political football," said Christopher Wysocki, president of the conservative Small Business Survival Committee, which sees the divide as a gap separating small businesses and large businesses. "Everybody's definition of what the digital divide is, is different. You see people use it for their own purposes."
 | - by Rebecca Weiner |
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