By STEPHEN SNOW
The Digital Divide looms before us like an iceberg for our Titanic society. We can complain all we want about the dawning Information Age, but it has happened and will continue happening.
We can either do something about it or pay the price for our lack of vision.
What do we need to do?
Picture four strands of rope bound tightly together.
Each one stands for a facet of community-available telecommunication: access, content, training and support. They represent what it will take to bridge the so-called Divide.
There must be:
· Convenient and ready access, preferably at home, to the means to get online and do meaningful things.
· Constantly fresh, growing, accurate and timely content of interest to people who would have access to it.
· Ongoing training. Millions of people do not go online because it is difficult or scary. And even the most sophisticated of us needs training from time to time.
· Technical and financial support. Ongoing access to technical support is crucial because equipment breaks, software fails and people make mistakes. Computers are not easy to use, and the World Wide Web can be confusing. People need help staying connected. The financial needs are broader. (More about that in a minute.)
I’m not merely talking about giving everyone a computer; by itself, that’s no more useful than saying if we provide cars for everyone, we’ll all get to work on time.
But, for people – especially people who might lack the ability to be online, who live now mainly outside the electronic culture -- to get, and stay, online requires a serious, long-term commitment to all of four strands of the rope.
You can provide each function individually, but the value is weakened as each strand is removed. Without access, people can’t get online; without content, they have no reason to go online; without training, they can’t master the techniques of the online world; without support, they can’t sustain being online.
A recent report by the Gartner Group, a Connecticut-based business and technology research and consulting firm, notes that 35 percent of those in lower economic groups have Internet access compared to 85 percent of those in higher
economic groups. This is one, general, way to measure the Divide.
To date, much of the focus on the Digital Divide has been on access, even national efforts by the likes of the U.S. Education and Commerce departments. At best, access is only the barest minimum of a start.In addition, development in all areas has been largely ad-hoc and bottom-up. While many good things happen bottom-up, they lack the financial underpinning to sustain their good work. Instead of four strands of rope, these efforts, however laudable, are at best tenuous strands of thread.
Two current Clinton Administration proposals -- the Home Internet Access Program and the Technology Opportunity Program -- are part of an Appropriations Bill Congress is now debating.
The Home Internet Access Program would provide $50 million for investments to bring low-income and at-risk populations online.
The Technology Opportunity Program would provide $45 million in matching funds to governments and non-profits to extend information technology to people in under-served communities.But even these are small, tactical approaches, much like throwing spoonfuls of dirt onto a levee to stop a flood.
"A piecemeal, hodgepodge approach to this problem, no matter how well-intended, is not the right approach," U.S. Rep. John Larson said this week, urging a more strategic effort. "We're going to need nothing short of a technological Marshall Plan for this initiative to succeed."
Thankfully, there is an excellent model – for the Carolinas, as well as the nation – for the kind of commitment Larson seeks.
Five years ago, Texas made a deal with major telephone companies: in return for concessions on how they bill for services, a $1.5 billion, 10-year initiative was launched to connect the state’s 20 million residents. Five years later, nearly every school, library and rural health facility has low-cost, high-speed Internet connectivity.
They now are focusing on the initiative’s capstone: building content to drive use of the enhanced access. The Texas Infrastructure Fund Board (www.tifb.state.tx.us) last month committed $16 million for Phase I of a multi-year Community Networking initiative.
This money provided for 37 communities to begin creating community networks, systems that will enhance education, provide economic and community development and build information-sharing within communities. A second round of community networking support will be announced this month.
While some funding is competitive, much of the Texas money has been non-competitive: apply and you get it. And you can go back for more.
What’s going on here? Strategic thinking, that’s what. Like many states, Texas has a large, very dispersed, rural population. The only way to address the vastness of the problem was strategically: long-term financial support to ensure that organizations and citizens could get – and stay – online.
The same kind of thinking is desperately needed in the Carolinas and nationwide.
However, the Digital Divide debate is highly politicized, driven often by cynics who steadfastly claim that market forces will make everything happen in due time. In its extreme, perhaps, this is accurate: eventually, glaciers melt, also.
But what happens in the meantime? Are we left merely to wring our collective hands and let another generation grow up bereft of hope in our society? And what of the deeper divide that creates: millions who see little or no gain from the current wave of prosperity; instead of being swept along, they are being swept under.
As many as 50 million American adults are at risk of becoming functionally
illiterate in coming years because they're technologically deprived. So says the recent Gartner Group study."The Internet will soon be so pervasive that not having access to the technology or not knowing how to use it will be the equivalent of not knowing how to read or write," says Gartner CEO Michael Fleisher.
Addressing the Digital Divide will take a serious, persistent, strategic commitment, requiring bold new thinking and acting.
The price-tag is high, very high. And the work is very hard. But, compared to the cost of re-creating an illiterate society, solving the Digital Divide will be a bargain.
Community Networking Consultant Stephen Snow (shsnow@mindspring.com) is President of Community Consulting Inc., and past president of the U.S. Association For Community Networking.
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