Page 142 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

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However, others argue that true digital inclusion requires keeping up with
a set of technologies that are in perpetual motion. Advances in hardware used
to access the Internet, from mobile phones to personal digital assistants, con-
fer greater benefits on those who can afford to buy the latest devices. Facility
with rapidly developing applications, from instant messaging to blogs to wikis,
empowers some denizens of cyberspace to express themselves more widely and
powerfully than others. New forms of Internet service, including high-speed
service and wireless access, allow some to connect faster, more conveniently,
and more productively than others. Some of us will always fall behind without
support because as some technologies that shape Internet usage are widely
adopted others are introduced that transform access anew.

CommuniCaTion righTs
Critics of efforts to close the digital divide maintain that a market economy re-
quires us to accept some inequality of outcomes in life. As long as a society makes
some effort to provide equal opportunity to meet basic human needs, it is not a
problem that some will end up earning more than others and therefore be able to
afford more luxuries. From this standpoint, people may have fundamental rights
to public schooling, basic health care, or national security, but not to most com-
munication technologies and services. Perhaps the poor should pay less for local
telephone service so that they can call 911 for help in emergencies, but they do
not deserve free or low-cost broadband Internet service subsidized by higher rates
on other users. Furthermore, the critics argue, most people who still lack home
Internet connections do not want them either because they find the Internet un-
necessary or objectionable. For some, being an Internet have-not is a choice.

digital inClusion ProJeCts

There are many examples of efforts to extend the benefits of full Internet access to under-
served communities. For example, when the city of Philadelphia commissioned a munici-
pal broadband network, it required the private company that offered Internet service over
the city’s network to set aside 5 percent of annual revenues earned in the city to pay for
computers and training for low-income families and minority-owned businesses. The city
also required that service be offered at a discount to poor families and that free access be
available at numerous “hotspots” around Philadelphia. Some nonprofit organizations have
gone further by developing Web sites that attract underserved groups to use the Internet by
offering informational, educational, and job training resources targeted to these groups’ in-
terests. For example, One Economy, an organization that provides computers, Internet ser-
vice, and training in public housing developments, created its own World Wide Web site in
English and Spanish called The Beehive, which includes information tailored to low-income
people about money, health, jobs, school, news, voting, citizenship, and family issues. The
Beehive also offers free e-mail accounts and many local sites focused on users’ home cities
to connect people to their communities.