Your Guide to the Digital Divide

YOUR GUIDE TO THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
[SOURCE: Media Shift, AUTHOR: Mark Glaser]
The digital divide is the chasm separating the haves and have-nots in digital technology. On one side are people who can afford or who have access to computers, a high-speed broadband connection and the plethora of services from online banking to social networking to blogging. On the other side of the equation are people who cannot afford the technology, cannot get broadband access because of their location, or who have learning or cultural limitations to using the technology. There are many digital divides: Rural and urban; poor and rich, African-American and white; old and young; disabled and able; developing nation and developed nation. All these factors have been studied and solutions have been debated for years. In fact, Martin Luther King Jr. talked about such a divide in one of his last speeches four days before he died in 1968: "There can be no gainsaying about the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today…That is, a technological revolution with the impact of automation and cybernation…Modern man through scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance. Through our genius we have made this world a neighborhood. And yet we — we have not yet had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this." Very few people remember a speech by President George W. Bush on March 26, 2004, in which he called for affordable broadband access for everyone. “This country needs a national goal for the spread of broadband technology,” President Bush said. “We ought to have universal affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007 and then we ought to make sure, as soon as possible thereafter, consumers have choices when it comes to their carrier.” As 2007 dawns, we obviously do not have universal affordable access to broadband, and consumers have little choice for providers outside of the duopoly of cable and telephone carriers.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/01/digging_deeperyour_guide_to_th.html