Giant media conglomerates and computer companies are rapidly increasing their control of the information and communication infrastructure upon which this public sphere depends. Governments, too are often part of this problem: instead of promoting access and multi-way access to this infrastructure they actively or passively discourage civic sector uses. Civic society is fighting back in a million ways. The opportunities and threats offered by a global "network society" are too great to be ignored.

"The Seattle School District and the University of Washington are collaborating to create a curriculum for middle school and high school students that begins to engage them in some of the complexities of the digital divide, especially in the global dimensions of these issues. The curriculum will give students historical, economic and social contexts for the digital divide,...

s computer networking becomes increasingly important to economic and social success, many people in inner cities and isolated rural areas are failing to acquire the new technology as rapidly as their more affluent neighbors...

a Seattle-based nonprofit institute, evokes the leadership that catalyzes investments in technology content and infrastructures needed by the poor. [also here]

"Concepts of potential and realized interaction and accessibility are central to geographic theory and models. Current models are based, however, on physical notions of distance and connectivity that are insufficient for understanding new forms of structures and behaviors characterizing an information age. Accessibility and spatial interaction in the traditional physical sense remain important, but information technologies are dramatically modifying and expanding the scope of these core geographical concepts."

Computers are increasingly conditioning the kind of country we live in. DIGITAL DIVIDE shines a light on the role computers play in widening social gaps throughout our society, particularly among young people. By providing equitable and meaningful access to technology we can ensure that all children step into the 21st Century together.

The concept of "universal service" in U.S. telecommunications policy has traditionally referred to the goal that all Americans should have access to affordable telephone service. As America has increasingly become an information society, however, that concept has broadened to include access to information services. Now that a considerable portion of today's business, communication, and research takes place on the Internet, access to the computers and networks may be as important as access to traditional telephone services. At the request of Vice President Gore, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration ("NTIA") has analyzed telephone and computer penetration rates across the United States to determine who is, and who is not yet, connected....

Information tools, such as the personal computer and the Internet, are increasingly critical to economic success and personal advancement. In early July, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration issued a report, Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide, that found a growing gap between those with access to these tools and those without.

' Whatever gulf separates the rich from the poor, an even greater chasm separates the armed from the unarmed and the ignorant from the educated. Today, in the fast-changing, affluent nations, despite all inequities of income and wealth, the coming struggle for power will increasingly turn into a struggle over the distribution of and access to knowledge.'"

"The truth is that there is nothing at all worldly or wide about the Web. Granted, the impact technology has played on the last half of the twentieth century has been profound, however, according to Patti Whaley's article Potential Contributions of Information Technologies to Human Rights 2/3 of the world's population has yet to make a phone call."

In collaboration with the Civil Rights Forum, CTCNet has supported a telecommunications public policy project, with special resources for existing and new rural affiliates, including a pool for $70,000 in funds for mini-grants. This project and collaboration were made possible with support from the Managing Information with Rural America (MIRA) initiative of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue: The Digital Divide: Exploring Equity and Politics Editor: Dr. Sharon Strover, University of Texas at Austin
The Information Society will publish a special theme issue investigating The Digital Divide. The goal of this issue is to move beyond simple documentation of "gaps" between those who do and do not have computers or Internet access in order to more thoroughly interrogate why this particular subject has galvanized so many different constituencies, how we might most usefully conceptualize it, and why it should or should not be a major contemporary policy focus.

... is a non-profit agency with a mission to provide communities of color access to technology. This foundation is the brainchild of Microsoft retiree Trish Millines and former Seattle Mental Health practitioner Jill Hull. TAF was started in October 1996.

On Wednesday, 9 February, the US Congressional Judiciary Committee (Sub-Committee on the Constitution) held a hearing to investigate whether the Americans with Disabilities Act should be applied to commercial Internet service providers and websites. Nine witnesses were called to give testimony, representing the various interests at stake.

a national network of technology resource centers and technology vendors that help children and adults with disabilities, parents, teachers, employers, and others to explore computer systems, adaptive devices and software. Of particular interest are the sections labeled "WWW Design" and "Access to the WWW."

coordinated by the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL), facilitates linkages among researchers, consumers, and service providers with respect to the needs and preferred modes of information access for the disabled. Past issues of NCDR's quarterly newsletter, The Research Exchange, are available online, and cover topics ranging from promoting websites to disabled users to evaluating the effectiveness of Internet activity.

[The Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy (PCMLP) was founded in 1996] "This Access forum serves as a follow-up to the Conference. During the conference the belief that access to ICTs can make a significant difference to social and economic development was reinforced. The conference recognised that a new approach to universal access needed to be developed..."

It is a digital divide, yes. But the more important divide, as Microsoft chairman Bill Gates continues to argue, is between their water, food, schools and health.

NEW DELHI, India -- The wall is not a subtle or decorative thing, and it was put there, let's be clear, to keep the poor people out. Slums on one side, India's gleaming high-tech future on the other. The wall was built solely to protect the stately corporate headquarters of NIIT, a huge computer-training and software-services firm. But now there's a breach in that wall...

When the government released a report this year saying black Americans are not logging on to the Internet as rapidly as other groups, it raised a small furor, with many charging the data were inaccurate.

July 12, 1999: As the U.S. moves ahead on the information super highway, some risk being left behind. This is the caveat made clear by Falling through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide, a report published by the Department of Commerce.

In the past three years, public computer sites have opened at Seattle public libraries, neighborhood-service centers, community centers, senior centers and nonprofit organizations, as well as for-profit operations like the Speakeasy Cafe. There are now 96 public computer sites in Seattle and King County.

Many Netizens have long thought of the Internet as the great equalizer. A study released today by Bellcore Labs says that is not so. The same divergence found in society along cultural and racial lines is found online and offline, according to James Katz, who conducted the Markle Foundation-funded study. Katz calls the phenomenon of who is online and who is not the "digital divide."

At a time when the Clinton Administration is promoting the Internet as an engine of commerce and a tool of democracy, a new study has found that black Americans are far less likely to use the global computer network than are whites.

.... it turns out that new economies have emerged in the U.S. and world economies about every half-century or so. Today's New Economy, in other words, is one of a progression of new economies over the past two centuries, beginning with the high Industrial Revolution in Britain in the late 1700s....

For your information, my paper, "The Growing Digital Divide in Access for People with Disabilities: Overcoming Barriers to Participation," has been republished by the World Economic Development Congress for the 9/99 World Bank/IMF Summit as well as for the Official Business Briefings of the United Nations Economic Forum in Geneva last June 2000. It has also be cited by governments around the world and is currently undergoing translation in a number of foreign languages.