Digital Divide

So, I'm doing an annotated bibliography about the Digital Divide-here is my first entry...

Light, J.S. 2001 Rethinking the Digital Divide Harvard Educational Review v 71 n 4, Winter 2001 Harvard University Press (?)

This being the first article of this bibliography, I will define the nature of the “Digital Divide” in writing about it. Most of the other articles also contain a definition of it, as well as historical accounts of previous technological divides in our society. The Digital Divide, simply put, is the inequality of distribution of technology. In our day, computer ownership, usage, and access to Internet are the main focus, but this happened with wiring our country with electricity, telephone, and cable television. Disparities to access were noted more prominently in rural communities, both black and white, than urban communities. The disparity became more prominent in urban communities with the advent of cable television.
The article “Rethinking the Digital Divide” discusses the concept of what we call “The Digital Divide”, and how “solving” it through increased access to technology is not enough to really close it. Two main previous examples are used to illustrate how simply increasing access to technology does not necessarily solve a problem.
In the era of early cable television, the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, there was not the technological determinism that predominates the current debate. Cable television was not seen as a cure-all to social disparity problems. It was discussed as part of a larger debate on how to improve life for economically disadvantaged citizens. Today, there is a focus on the idea that if we provide access to the Internet to everyone, it will significantly improve the situation for our society’s least advantaged members. True, as of 2000 approximately twice as many White and Asian households had access to the Internet than Black or Hispanic households. The point of the article is that simply fixing this will not fix the larger problem. A parallel is drawn between this and the access to calculators in schools being essentially fixed, yet scores on standardized tests did not appreciate commensurately. One can argue that the means of measurement are flawed, but for the purposes of this discussion we will take it as a given that standardized tests are at least a passable measurement of mathematical ability. The author argues that even though computers and Internet access can be seen as qualitatively different than cable television and calculators, there must be more focus on using this tool in a way that gives advantages to everyone. Increased relevant content, increased ownership of internet-based enterprises, and increased usage, not just availability, of Internet connections in urban schools are points she makesThe Digital Divide must not be addressed just as a quantitative problem, but a qualitative one. As the author puts it “…fastening such hopes (for a more equal future society) onto computers and the Internet evades the complex causes of inequality and instead focuses on treating one of its symptoms, unequal access to technology, with the assumption that closing one gap will close others” (pg. 6).