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| DATE | 2017-02-06 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] what is important in the digital divide
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https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603061/closing-the-digital-divide-isnt-easy-but-we-have-to-try/
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Closing the Digital Divide Isn’t Easy—But We Have to Try
The poorest people, who might benefit most from Internet access, are
often the least likely to have it.
by Jason Pontin December 20, 2016
Almost as soon as there was a World Wide Web, people worried about the
“digital divide.” In the summer of 1995, the new National
Telecommunications and Information Administration published a report,
“Falling through the Net: A Survey of the ‘Have Nots’ in Rural and Urban
America.” NTIA administrator Larry Irving and a White House aide named
Albert Hammond began using the phrase to refer to inequality of access
to information services. Vice President Al Gore spoke of it in his speeches.
More than 20 years later, it’s easy to think that the digital divide has
nearly closed, like a healing wound. In the United States, 88 percent of
the population has Internet access of some sort; globally, the figure is
around 40 percent. According to various estimates, there will be more
than six billion smartphones in the world by 2020, used by around 70
percent of the global population.
This story is part of our January/February 2017 Issue
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But even in the United States, as David Talbot writes in “The Hole in
the Digital Economy,” the poorest people, who might benefit most from
Internet access, are often the least likely to have it.
Talbot writes, “Most homes in the United States have Internet service,
but they don’t in the poor parts of Cleveland … A survey in 2012 showed
that 58 percent of the area’s households with incomes under $20,000 had
neither home broadband nor mobile Internet access, often because of the
cost … Until recently, one such household was a ground-floor two-bedroom
apartment in a public housing project called Outhwaite Homes, where a
circumspect 13-year-old girl named Ma’Niyah Larry lives with her mother,
Marcella.”
Under a special-education plan to improve her mathematical skills,
Ma’Niyah is supposed to solve problems and watch videos offered online
by Khan Academy. But Marcella can’t afford Time Warner’s broadband fee
of $50 a month, and although the family owns a smartphone, it’s hard to
solve problems on the tiny screen, and a few hours of math videos would
exhaust their phone’s data plan. The local library has high-speed
Internet, but “it’s so bad down here that it’s not really safe to walk
outside,” Marcella says.
Digital evangelists once made strong claims for the economic and social
benefits that would flow from closing the divide. Few experts are as
confident today, but no one would dispute the assessment of the White
House Council of Economic Advisers: “The digital divide is likely both a
cause and a consequence of other demographic disparities.” Without
digital access, a long list of modern activities, including online
education, are impossible. The digital divide separates and traps the poor.
Cleveland’s public housing agency has given Ma’Niyah a tablet and a
wireless hotspot in a trial to help close the “homework gap,” but such
pilot projects aren’t a solution for thousands of families. Happily, a
nonprofit named DigitalC plans to extend a fiber-optic network that
connects Cleveland’s hospitals (built with a 2009 federal stimulus
grant) to the city’s housing projects, using a millimeter-wave
transmission system from a company called Siklu. The plan would bring
gigabyte-per-second connections to the city’s public housing, and in
combination with an FCC subsidy, it would make broadband practical for
most tenants in the projects.
That’s good. But what about the millions in America’s inner cities and
rural communities who can’t count on a project like Cleveland’s
DigitalC? The most plausible solution is to stimulate competition among
broadband providers. Sometimes competition will be made possible by
government investments in infrastructure: local, state, or federal
monies would subsidize the building of fiber-optic networks. Sometimes
governments can remove red tape to encourage investment: then any
company, not just those that own physical conduits like utility poles,
can easily add new fiber. Competition to reduce costs and increase
speeds has narrowed the digital divide in a number of American cities,
including Huntsville, Alabama, and Kansas City. Of course, the approach
has any number of problems, especially in the countryside. But if we
don’t try, too many children like Ma’Niyah Larry will find it harder to
learn.
Tell me what you think: write to me at jason.pontin-at-technologyreview.com.
Tagged
Letter from the Editor, digital divide, Internet access
Credit
Photo by Guido Vitti
Jason Pontin
Jason Pontin Editor in Chief and Publisher
I’m the editor in chief and the publisher of MIT Technology Review. That
means I direct the editorial, platform development, and general business
strategy of the company’s digital and print publications, as well as our
events.… More
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