Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide

Citation

Line, M.B. (2004), "Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide", The Electronic Library, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 82-83. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470410520186

The digital divide is a subject that has been very well aired in recent years. This book aims to shed fresh and more penetrating light on the divide in the USA. The authors are all academics at Kent State University, two from the Department of Political Science and one from the School of Library and Information Science. There are in fact several divides: in access to the Internet, in the skills needed to make use of it, in economic opportunity, and in what the authors call the “democratic divide”.

It is clear from previous studies that there is a sizable gap in access to information available on the Internet between richer and poorer people, between city and country dwellers, and between the well and less well educated. But these studies are limited, in that they do no more than present data in simple percentages, with few cross‐tabulations and little or no attempt to probe the precise nature of the reasons for the gap. Not satisfied with these general and fairly obvious findings, the authors carried out their own survey to look at broad trends, and subjected data from three previous national surveys to multivariate regression analysis in order to identify more detailed aspects. This revealed some findings that were unexpected, though not especially startling. Those least likely to have Internet access at home are the poor, the less educated, the old, Democrats, Latinos, and African Americans, partly because fewer of them own computers. This is almost certainly true for the first three categories in the UK; it would be interesting to know if Labour voters, immigrants from various countries, and West Indians are also relatively disadvantaged. Only a small percentage used public libraries for access.

The importance of relevant skills – technical competence, information literacy and basic literacy – has long been recognised. Those most likely to need help with the first two of these skills are much the same as those who lack access, except that children need to be substituted for the old, and women are more likely to need technical help than men. One‐on‐one instruction is the preferred method of learning new skills, followed by group instruction.

The chapter on “The economic opportunity divide” discusses the skills that workers need to survive in the new information‐based economy, and considers the linkage of IT skills, needed for finding jobs, doing jobs and for continuing learning, to economic opportunity. Latinos and African Americans are most likely to think they need the Internet to keep up, and those who most place importance on computer skills are the young, African Americans, the unemployed, and women. Two‐thirds of US citizens are convinced that a connection exists between computer skills and economic opportunity, but other skills conveyed by education are equally necessary for personal advancement. As the following chapter shows, wider dissemination of computer access and skills would also encourage and enable greater participation in the democratic process, by improved access to information on parties and candidates and by online voting.

The overall message is clear. Computer access, and computer skills, are increasingly necessary for today’s and tomorrow’s world, a fact fully recognised by those who would benefit most from improvement. A narrowing of the digital divide could benefit the USA economically and politically, as well as helping the disadvantaged themselves.

There are clear implications for local and national government, and indeed there appear to be more than 20,000 (mostly small) programmes to broaden access to technology (contrary to what one might expect in the USA, where the market might be supposed to look after such problems). The major current programmes aim to extend public access in schools, libraries and community technology centres. The largest federal effort is the E‐Rate programme, which spent over US$2.25 billion in 2001, offering big discounts on IT in libraries and schools. Two other big programmes were threatened with elimination by the Bush administration, but the threat has been stalled. As a result of all this effort, and independent initiatives, some success is reported. The few recommendations that conclude the text relate to skills development in public access sites; limited experimentation with an educational technology subsidy; and equal educational opportunity and public investment in lifelong learning.

The book is nicely produced. It is classified as a paperback, but the paper is of good quality and the covers are actually quite stiff card – what I think of as a “cardback”. I found no typographic or linguistic errors, except for the use of “disinterest” to mean “lack of interest” on p.123. It is clearly written, the statistics are well presented, the bibliography is extensive, and the index is more than adequate. The importance of its topic is undoubted, but I did not find the discussion quite as illuminating as the blurb led me to expect. Moreover, its interest is severely limited by the fact that it is concerned only with the USA. A similar work dealing with the UK, or with Europe generally, would be valuable.