Y2K angst had scarcely subsided when a new crisis emerged, the "digital divide," hailed by the President of the United States as the "key civil rights issue of the 21st Century," deserving $2 billion in government programs, and showcased in PBS documentaries. One of these, rebroadcast Monday for San Franciscans on ZD TV, confirms that this vaunted crisis rests on shaky foundations. As the President brokers the crisis, the Internet contains invisible barriers that discriminate against minorities and the poor. Without government intervention, the argument goes, the divide will widen, leaving some forever behind.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard’s director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American research, argues that to the extent that blacks are "cyber-segregated," it is self imposed. He compares the problem to the recording industry in the 1920s, which struck a chord with blacks only when companies introduced jazz and blues records targeting the black market. But the Internet isn't making that mistake. Indeed, new web sites for African Americans are a growth industry.
The Los Angeles Times recently reported that Larry Irving, a former digital divide crusader, quit his job at the Administration to start up a web site targeted at blacks. Likewise, Ron Cadet of Imhotech told ZD TV that he figures his company will create "the killer app to get African Americans on-line." And the PBS interviewee who said that "computer chips have no color" is right on target.
According to Forrester Research, the Internet access gap between the races has pretty much vanished. "There is no digital divide in terms of race," stated Ekaterina O. Walsh, author of the Forrester study. With all that effort going towards content creation, it would appear that the remaining racial divide will be gone before the ink dries on President Clinton’s government handouts. But what about the divide between the poor and wealthy?
Given the constantly shrinking prices for computers and access fees combined with the cornucopia of private sector initiatives (AOL, AT&T, and Microsoft, to name a few), that shouldn’t last much longer either. According to Andersen Consulting, by 2005, 91% of US households will be on-line. As Adam Clayton Powell at the Freedom Forum has pointed out, that’s more households with Internet access than with cable and satellite television.
While new technologies take a while to catch on, Internet access has spread to 50 million people in only four years. That’s about nine times faster than radio, four times faster than the personal computer, and three times faster than television. At this rate, it won’t be long until all of those who desire Internet access will have it. What this amazing growth requires from government is not more taxing and spending but more patience.
Even liberal Democrats no longer subscribe to the sixties notion that money will make every problem disappear. It can hardly help to give computers to children who can’t yet read. Better to focus on education reform before we storm the schools with gadgets that will sit unused.
If government wants to spread Internet access, it should scrap all thoughts of costly programs, leave the Internet unregulated, and ease up on the taxes individuals pay. This will give all Americans the means to make their own choices about technology. For some, the extra cash could provide the means for them to log on for the first time.
