Closing Digital Divides : The United States ’ Policies

The power of information technology has been signifi cantly stronger due to its increased presence everywhere. The benefi ts of information technology have been exposed in various ways. The explosive growth of telecommunications, particularly the Internet, not only virtually eliminates physical distances, but also extensively delivers a great deal of information to individuals and societies. However, there are concerns from a democratic point of view about the inequality of opportunities to obtain the benefi ts from the use of information technology. The term digital divide has been increasingly used to describe this gap in discussions among different groups of scholars and professions. The defi nition of the term, laying out the scope of the issue, has been discussed widely. Compaine (2001) introduces the digital divide as ”the perceived gap between those who have access to the latest information technologies and those who do not.” Compaine addresses the moving boundaries of the issue from personal computer ownership to incorporate Internet access, and recently to high-speed (broadband) access. Nevertheless, according to his defi nition, the term latest information technologies may raise some defi nitive questions. For example, is the digital divide the matter of not obtaining the latest technologies or a suffi cient subset of recent technologies? Are the latest technologies always categorized as being in the interest of public good? From the political point of view, Norris (2001) elaborates the problem in three aspects: global divide, social divide and democratic divide. Her defi nition focuses on those gaps of Internet access only covering international and domestic levels, and fi nally narrows down to individual engagement, mobilization and participation. However, the scope of the issue is expanding continually due to the development of technology. Mossberger, Tolbert and Stanbury (2003) argue that the restriction of digital divide to the problem of access to technology is insuffi cient. They broaden the scope of the issue to include four major aspects: access, skills, economic opportunity and democratic divides. This paper uses these four categories to frame the movements of the United States in closing the digital divide. However, it seems likely that there is no consensus on the boundaries of this issue. While society and technology have been continu-