The
New York Times admits today that the digital divide is a thing of the past.
African-Americans are steadily gaining access to and ease with the Internet, signaling a remarkable closing of the "digital divide" that many experts had worried would be a crippling disadvantage in achieving success.
Experts? Any economist could have told you that computers would phase in slowly, like every other major innovation. Phones, cars, buttons: all of these started as luxuries affordable only to the wealthy, but as supply rose to meet demand, price fell enormously until they became common to all but the poorest.
Like Jason, almost 9 out of 10 of the 21 million Americans ages 12 to 17 use the Internet, according to a report issued in July by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Of them, 87 percent of white teenagers say they use the Internet, while 77 percent of black teenagers and 89 percent of Hispanic teenagers say they have access to it, the report said.
In the twelve or thirteen years since the internet became a reasonably well-known commodity, we've reached 77 percent saturation in the
lowest-access racial group (among the young)? Phenomenal, in my opinion. It shows how incredibly cheap access is, and how universally desired. Of course, older people are slower to log in, but this is clearly a matter of preference, since the old are wealthier than the young, and if a black 13-year-old can get online, so can a black 63-year-old. But most 63-year-olds figure they don't need to find out
what candy they are.
The divide was considered so dire a decade ago that scholars, philanthropists and even President Bill Clinton in his 1996 State of the Union address fretted over just what the gap would mean in lost educational and employment opportunities for young people who were not wired.
In other news, the Y2K bug didn't turn out to be such a big deal either.
6 comments:
I'm more worried about the digital divide across developed and developing countries.
There's this small village in the Phillipines which could only make one good. They had to travel miles and miles to get other goods. Poor? You bet. But someone stuck a computer and the internet in the village, taught a few people how to use it and just a year later, the villagers were earning 100s more than they were used too by selling their stuff online.
Can you imagine if someone like Bill Gates would spend a couple of his billions to this cause, how much quality of life would increase for poor areas?
Adora -
Some people have done things like that. Last year, I profiled an Indian businessman who sets up computer portals in poor villages and then hands them over to the local kids with no instruction whatsoever. The kids figure out how to use it within a few weeks.
My original post is: http://instantreplay.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_instantreplay_archive.html
search for "Indian".
anonymous is off-topic
Anonymous is a bleeping robot.
Another example of the left looking for the negative, rather than rejoicing in the positive.
Clinton shouldn't have worried, but rather optimistically looked forward to progress helping both rich and poor. Adora shouldn't worry, either. If Bill Gates gets computers to those people this year, great; but if not, they'll get them in a very few short years, and the benefits will follow.
I find it problematic that black people are using the internet now. It's only a matter of time before we start seeing internet gangs and internet crack and what not. Pretty soon we'll all have to move out to some sort of "extranet" or something.
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