The Digital Divide

Enthusiasm for the anticipated social dividends of the Internet appears boundless. Indeed, the Internet is expected to do no less than virtually transform society. Yet even as the Internet races ambitiously toward critical mass, some social scientists and politicians are beginning to carefully examine the current implications of Internet access and usage and coined the phrase, “digital divide”. Defined, digital divide is a difference in rates of access to computers and the Internet among different demographic groups. In a statement before Congress, then Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Telecommunications Larry Irving warned of "America's digital divide." In his testimony he said "[the digital divide] is now one of America's leading economic and civil rights issues and we have to take concrete steps to redress the gap between the information haves and have nots."
Americans bought home computers and hooked them up to the Internet at a remarkable rate between December 1998 and A...