Benton Institute for Broadband & Society

The Charles Benton Early Career Scholar Committee has awarded Burcu Baykurt the 2019 TPRC Charles Benton Early Career Scholar Award Winner and Jacob Manlove the runner up. Burcu Baykurt wrote (Dis)connecting the Digital City which examines how the connectivity infrastructures of the digital city are laid over uneven terrains and the ways residents react to those changes. Assessing the Need for a Measure of Broadband Adoption Inequality, written by Jacob Manlove, proposes the use of the absolute value index which distinguishes between no mobile use, mobile only, fixed only,

Two publications released this week have us thinking about the impact the digital divide has on education, schools, and students. In many schools around the country, teachers might be able to take for granted that their students have access to the internet outside of school. Unfortunately, for too many students, that just isn't true. The resulting "Homework Gap" is expanding inequity. 

Seventy-five years ago, in October 1944, my grandfather, William Benton, delivered a clarion call in the pages of Forbes magazine by articulating a forward-looking agenda on behalf of a coalition of business leaders (“the capitalists who cared enough about the system to save it”) to deliver a more peaceful and prosperous American future in the (then-expected) wake of winning World War II. William Benton recognized that American progress rested on the connection between economic opportunity and democracy.