The digital divide in the United States and global disparities

Digital Divide

The Social System: User, Managers, and IT Professionals

The term Digital Divide refers to the broad disparities between income groups in terms of availability of information technologies including the Internet and related services. Studies of the Digital Divide show that the greater the accessibility of the Internet, specifically in schools and libraries, the higher the probability of students graduating and pursuing advanced education (Stevenson, 2009). Advocate organizations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Gates Center for technology Access (GCTA) argue that it is critically important for the Digital Divide to be eradicated to ensure below poverty line children and families have an opportunity to pursue educational opportunities and therefore increase their earning potential (Stevenson, 2009). The hard reality of the Digital Divide is that it exists in the United States just as prevalently as in 3rd world nations (Agarwal, Animesh, Prasad, 2009). The CTA has discovered that "poverty pockets" exist in the lowest income areas of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and New Mexico for example as telecommunication companies refuse to run broadband or even telephone lines into the poorest countries in the country for lack of potential revenue (Stevenson, 2009).

The Digital Divide in the U.S. -- Real and Growing

The fact is that if a family is below the poverty line in the Untied States there is a very good chance they will eventually find themselves on the side of the Digital Divide where Internet access is not affordable if available at all. The studies completed by GTCA as underwritten by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation underscore this point as correlational analysis has shown that these lowest income American families are often in a vicious cycle of not being able to better their lives through education, taking the lowest paying jobs, and then not being able to afford to better themselves through training for higher paying jobs. The mission of the GCTA is to wire every library and school in these "poverty pockets" to give the lowest income students and their families an opportunity to learn more online, increase not only their knowledge but also the potential to earn more through online training. It is common to find GCTA teams in the field using corporate American Express cards to charge up to $5,000 to get telecommunications companies to wire a town library or school for examp0le, or pay to have a single telephone line dropped into a desolate and poverty-stricken county in New Mexico. The U.S. has in fact an embarrassing technology secret as the most advanced nation on the planet: if anyone is below the poverty line in the country there is a good chance they will either lose Internet access or never have the chance to better themselves with the learning and training available on it in the first place.

Solutions to the Digital Divide

As this problem perpetuates poverty and suffering in low-income families globally and robs children of achieving their potential to rise out of poverty, clearly a more concerted and coordinated effort is needed. Public sector, private sector and non-profit sector organizations need to create a global consortium and seek the assistance of telecommunications companies. Second, this consortium needs to recruit volunteers from the IT industry to help wire these regions lacking Internet access. Giving a tax credit to companies who provide their services and also their materials is one way to get greater levels of cooperation. Creating a technology volunteer corps of IT professionals and experts could lessen the costs of salaries as their time would be donated and tax deductable. Previous efforts to coordinate with telecommunications companies have failed as the global recession forced them to cut off funding for these programs as their own profitability become an issue (Agarwal, Animesh, Prasad, 2009). Instead if the consortium was able to persuade the governments of the world to provide these tax breaks there would be much greater activity than what the GCTA alone is going globally to help eradicate this problem. In fact the GCTA and other organizations who are sponsoring Digital Divide technology programs are using high-grade WiFi antennas to blanket entire regions of poverty-stricken counties in the U.S. using WiMAX for example (Middleton, Chambers, 2010). WiMAX is a technology known for being suitable across broad geographic regions due to its signal strength.

Conclusion

The Digital Divide is keeping many children and families from realizing their full earning potential by limiting their opportunities for learn and therefore earn more. It is very prevalent in the U.S., an embarrassment for one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth. Right now GCTA and other philanthropic organizations are literally funding efforts to close the Digital Divide yet have only solved a portion of this significant problem. Creating a consortium to fuel tax credits globally is one potential solution as are volunteer organizations to provide greater IT expertise.