Digital Divide

Digital Divide

According to the third report from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (1999), "the digital divide -- the disparities in access to telephones, personal computers (PCs), and the Internet across certain demographic groups -- still exists and, in many cases, has widened significantly" (p. 2). However, this revelation should not at all be alarming especially since access to valued resources has never been distributed equally between the haves and have-nots at any time or any place in America. Thus, the goal of this research paper is to closely examine some of ways that the disparities in access to new technologies and the internet have impacted certain demographic groups as it relates to educational opportunities, social inclusion, and economic competitiveness and to highlight other non-technological reasons, e.g., capitalism, cultural considerations, and life relevancies, that might offer a better explanation of the widening gap between the affluent and impoverished. To approach these issues, several scholarly sources will be cited to substantiate that the disparities in access is not the cause, nor is providing certain demographic groups with phones, PCs, and the internet the simple answer to this ever-increasing and multifaceted divide. Additionally, this paper will integrate graphics, charts, and tables, along with a PowerPoint slide show presentation, to corroborate its suppositions.

Whenever one demographic group, which is just a political axiom for socioeconomic characteristics that include age, gender, race, education and income (Buggey, 2007), is contrasted to another as the focus of a U.S. governmental study, it eventually gravitates toward deficient partisan assumptions being made about how the needs of the less fortunate groups can best be achieved. After President Clinton stated in his memorandum on Narrowing the Digital Divide (1999) that "Blacks and Hispanic households are only two-fifths as likely to have Internet access as [W]hite households" (para. 2), the digital divide issue then received its fair share of politicized posturing, which included grandeur speeches, flawed research, and legislative bickering that inevitably led to disingenuous effort to divert attention away from whatever might be perceived as negative attributes (Pierce, 2004), e.g., race and income disparities.

In fact, a careful analysis of the NTIA's first three reports will demonstrate that the biological, cultural, and situational determines (Maslow, 1943) of the underprivileged group's behavior are noticeably absent from those reports. Moreover, if their voices had been amalgamated in those reports, then the supposed disparities in access findings would most likely have to be reevaluated as a misdiagnosis of a more ubiquitous "race and socioeconomic" issue facing Blacks, Latinos, and others at the low-end of the scale. Perhaps, the report should have contained a cursory mention that new technological advancements have eliminated or reduced the need for many working class jobs. Further, it is evident that the disadvantaged's access to any esteemed resource (technological or otherwise) must be relegated as secondary to their primary needs, i.e., food, shelter, and clothing, according to Maslow's theory, which, by the way, cannot be achieved if the underserved demographic groups are not able to obtain and sustain gainful employment.

Nonetheless, access to today's technologies has the potential to bridge the gap as it relates to affording the have-nots with educational opportunities, social inclusion, and economic competitiveness to help them gain new insights and skills (Eubanks, 2007) that can very conceivably empower them with the mindset to improve the quality of only their lives.

However, such a realization will only come to fruition if the underserved populations acquire the literary ability to "distinguish between information and misinformation" (Bowles, 2010, p. 160), thus turning "[information] into knowledge by making a reasoned judgment about it" (p. 161). And these literary skills are best acquired from equity in educational opportunities.

Therefore, instead of only focusing on digital access to and the use of new technologies, educators and politicians alike must start a new discourse on this issue, whereas the main focus shifts from digital access to digital inequality, especially as it relates to computers and online learning. In other words, continuing to provide wanting demographic groups with increased access to digital technology without first meeting their most basic educational concerns, i.e., reading, writing, and reasoning skills, will ultimately lead to failure. Hence, as long as the have-nots lack a strong footing in these critical literacy skills, all the access in the world is not going to do them a lot of good (Carvin, 2006). Thus, it is no mystery that "teachers of English, with adequate resources and training, are poised to address this problem from the classroom, connecting the literacies of students' lives that are increasingly networked and digital with the academic skills they need to succeed in school and work" (Turner and Hicks, 2012, p. 57).

Although some policymakers have asserted that it is a smokescreen to narrowly focus on the inequity in access issue as a major cause of the digital divide, this does not abdicate the U.S. Government of its responsibility of ensuring that educational opportunities are made available to all students, if it intends to enforce its own No Child Left Behind Act (Robinson, 2008).

Further, in its unanimous 1954 landmark Brown v. the