Closing the TRUE Digital Divide.
[...]dropping technology costs and expanded access to the Internet for millions of Americans have led many to believe that the divide is soon to be a thing of the past in the United States. Last February, Nancy Victory, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, reported that the divide was disappearing. The study, A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of The Internet, shows that from 1998 to 2001 Internet use among African-Americans grew at an annual rate of 31 percent, while use among whites grew by 19 percent. Soon after the release of the study, the N.T.I.A. announced plans to kill the Technology Opportunities Program, which was designed to provide matching grant money for technology projects at schools, libraries, health agencies, police departments and nonprofits.This kind of thinking makes people like Servon nervous. "Because the technology gap has been defined so narrowly, policies and programs have also been narrowly focused," she writes. Servon believes that two major, and usually overlooked, components of the divide are training in IT literacy and the creation of content relevant to underserved communities--and that these issues are actually much more difficult to resolve then the more direct problem of access. "Policy makers' narrow focus on access is insufficient to the problem. There is a disconnect between policy and need," she writes.
According to Servon, "A troubling cycle has begun to take shape, in which the lack of access to information technology and its requisite skills contributes both to an inability to compete in the mainstream economy and an inability to participate in civil society." These inequities, she fears, will only increase as broadband, which enables users to access a higher volume of information, becomes more widespread among those with high incomes.
Technology, however, can be used to promote positive social change, to expand democracy and to alleviate poverty. In one chapter of her book Servon, with Marla K. Nelson, offers an instructive history of community technology centers (C.T.C.s) and the community technology movement, showing their development from the 1960's to the present. C.T.C.s aim to provide computer access to the general public and to underserved populations, especially low-income people. She also discusses some of the successful approaches now being practiced.
Servon believes that in addition to promoting computer literacy, community technology centers could become a potent force for economic advancement in poor neighborhoods as they bring residents together to set goals and achieve results.