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Is Clinton Riding the Wrong Digitial Divide?

© Glenn Hameroff

Why did President Clinton have to travel to Okinawa for a G-8 meeting to focus the world's attention on the economic consequences of the "Digital Divide."? The "Digital Divide" is the 21st century's euphemism for a number of politically incorrect 20th century terms such as: the have and have not nations, third world and the permanent underclass. The divide separates the nations who have implemented web technology and those who have not. However, I wish that our President possessed a 360-degree field of vision.

Without ever intending to sound like Pat Buchanan, doesn't Mr. Clinton realize that we have a glaring digital divide in the United States? To quote from a statistical brief from the U.S. Commerce Department: "access to computers among children was closely linked to family income, race and education. For children at the lower end of the economic spectrum, lack of access to computers during their school years may further limit their employment opportunities as adults". The technology of the Internet is the information and economic opportunity highway of the new century. The divide or gap between white and minority access is getting worse. A federal study quoted in Tech Week magazine indicated that in 1997 21.2% of whiter families used the Internet at home as compared with 7.7% of black families. A year later white usage top 32.4% while black families reached 11.7%, as the differences in educational and income levels increased so did the disparity in Internet usage increase.{ http://www.techweek.com./articles/11-1}

A study commissioned by the California Department of Education found 43% of families making less than $40,000 a year had a computer in the home, while 90% of families making $80,000 or more had a computer in the home. We must be aware that having a computer in the home does not guarantee that it is connected to an Internet Service Provider. This lack of access is economically detrimental to minorities struggling to take a step upward in the "Information-Age." So many well paying jobs go unfilled that the IT sector of the economy is constantly petitioning the Federal government to ease immigration restrictions. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that blacks make up 4% of the technical workforce at 33 major Silicon Valley employers and furthermore, while Latinos constitute 14% of the workforce in the state they only occupy 7% of the technological workforce. {Digital Divide Still Persists in the US-http://ecommerce.internet.com/ec-news/pr... } This lack of technological skills has led to an increase in the division of wealth in American society. The Economic Policy Institute reports that the top 1% of the income pyramid saw its share of the nation's wealth rise from 33.8 in 1983 to 39.1 in 1997. This growth took place while the bottom 95% of the income pyramid saw flat or negative growth in income. Investing billions to put every American classroom on the net cannot simply reverse this trend. Schools are not known for their ability to rapidly adapt to change. It will take the well-funded middle class schools about five years to hard wire their systems and they should become obsolete early in their installation period. Additionally, access must be provided at home and this will involve billions of dollars of investments in our inner city communities.