U.S. Government officials and social researchers have long been studying the phenomenon labeled ?The Digital Divide? (DD). The DD is defined as the distance between those people who possess functional computing skills in support of internet access, and those people who do not. The predominate factors limiting the acquisition and/or development of computing skills and subsequent internet access are generally identified as income level, ethnicity, and/or geography. The goal of this essay is to explore the current manifestations of the DD, their impact on American society and societies in general, the steps being taken to close the DD in America, and why other cultures may wish to study these steps. In addition, potential technological developments and their consequences to global populations will be explored.

The first point of importance to be addressed is the nature and existence of the DD. Early in the 1990?s the National Telecommunication and Information Agency (NTIA) made public the first of three successive reports based on data derived from the U.S. Census Bureau. Although this report was originally designed to review the usage of telephones, d

There is an inherent risk in not understanding the potential effects of any new, highly influential process and/or apparatus. A lack of understanding is also a lack of knowledge, and a lack of knowledge makes one susceptible to being controlled by others as described earlier. Just having a large body of information is no guarantee that it will generate useful knowledge. Knowledge is derived from the precise application of frequently unrelated bits of information to arrive at a successful solution to the understanding of a particular problem. Knowledge can be generated in the absence of any direct information. Indeed, the creation of an idea whose informed foundation cannot be easily identified would be a good example. This may also be described as an epiphany, or serendipitous revelation. There is no physical referent to this revelation. When one thinks of a philosophy, or perhaps a material invention, one is generating an idea whose conceptual origins remain essentially unidentifiable. However, in most cases, knowledge comes to us because we gather related pieces of information in a directed, intentional, and coordinated effort to build something that addresses a perceived need.

Governments and societies become functional for a variety of reasons, not the least of which revolves around the acquisition of power and the influence that power wields over others. The past decade, the development of the internet and the amount of complex and accessible information available there has produced a new definition of power: control of globally applicable information. In the modern era, it must be argued that those who control information and the technology to retrieve it have control over those who seek information. A culture, whose predominant resource is information, is then driven solely by various information agencies and agents. For those in control of these agencies, information can be parceled out, its interpretation orchestrated, even withheld, to the aggrandizement of the power brokers and the detriment of their subordinates. Thus, a small number of unscrupulous individuals are potentially able manage an entire culture simply by granting selective access to specific information, whether political, environmental, scientific, or social because they control the technology that supports the access processes. The resulting society would be structured in a bottom-heavy design. A small percentage of people exist at the top as the information brokers, and a very large percentage of people below them are under their control. As a culture becomes more dependent upon technology, it also becomes vulnerable to those who use technology skillfully. A parallel comparison can be drawn against this modern interpretation of power when we view existing information technologies during the dark ages of Europe. At that point, only clergy and aristocracy could read and write, and thus controlled a vast population of farmers, herders, sailors, merchants, and general tradespeople.

One question about the digital divide that comes to mind is ?who is being divided from what?? One popular description identifies a number of Americans who are not yet involved in computing and internet technologies. Indeed, recent research and current reports by the NTIA have identified a range of people in the U.S. who do not wish to become computer literate in any fashion whatsoever. These are known as modern version of the ?Luddites?, a group of people who rejected technology at the beginning of the industrial revolution over 135 years ago. They reacted to industrial driven change out of fear and ignorance and were overwhelmed by the potential influences and changes that advancing technologies would bring to society. Thus, they chose to live in the absence of industrial advances of the times. For them, all technology was suspect. The modern Luddite focuses more upon technological developments relating to computing and other digitally driven dev

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3992
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page double spaced)