|
RealAudio -- High Bandwidth or Low Bandwidth MP3 Download 
|
Al Gore has been running around the country lately wringing his hands about what he sees as a growing digital divide in America. The latest have-nots, according to Gore, are the unwired American underclass, particularly minorities. But wait -- aren't Asians classified as a minority? Asians are among the most wired folks in the US. And -- wait again -- blacks and Hispanics are getting wired to the Net at a rate that now outpaces whites. What's going on here? With a roaring economy, record low unemployment rates, and the success of welfare reform, are the Democrats just trying to create an issue they think will play well with their traditional base? Some people think so.
Adam Clayton Powell III is more than a bit suspicious about all this and has written a series of articles and editorials recently on the subject. If you're over forty, the name may jar memories, as it did for me. His father was New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who served from 1945 to 1970, a lonely and dangerous period for black elected officials. When Powell's father arrived in the nation's capitol to take his seat in Congress, he was faced with overt racist rules that barred blacks from using many of the capitol facilities. Powell ignored these rules -- well, he didn't just ignore them, he violated them with gusto, bringing as many black constituents as he could to Washington to dine with him at the House restaurant and to go anywhere else in their capitol that he felt citizens had a right to be. So, as this man's son, Adam Clayton Powell III brings more than just academic curiosity to bear on this topic. Besides his family credentials, Powell is also a techie. He is vice-president of technology and programs at the Freedom Forum, a Washington think tank. Previously, he was director of technology studies for the Freedom Forum's media program at Columbia University.
|
Real Audio Quick Clips Adam Clayton Powell on...
|
Powell says costs of technology have fallen to affordable levels for most already:
"The falling price of computer power and the falling price of Internet access (down to zero if you go through AltaVista or any number of other ISPs now) has really taken care of the economic argument. Computers by the end of this year will be approximately the same price as television sets, if not lower, and access to the Internet is already cheaper than access to cable television, so the economic barrier really isn't there. And what you're left with is something that may be more difficult to address, and that is the barrier by education."
Powell says that computer/Internet access in schools is now nearly universal:
"By January of this year we had 95 percent of all U.S. schools wired, and we have most classrooms wired. That's remarkable -- that's a remarkable achievement. And so in effect we've had the equivalent of the Rural Electrification Program take place. The real issue now is, "All right, you have the wires coming into the classroom, and you have computers" -- obviously there's a disparity between affluent school districts and poor school districts, but at least you have the service there, and hardware which -- certainly by 1993 standards -- is pretty sophisticated. The issue now is, "What do we really do? What are the applications that we want in schools?" And I think that's a more difficult subject than running cable and putting in hardware."
Powell claims that some in Washington act on mind-set rather than facts:
"The latest Forrester reports, the Arthur Andersen study, the Nielsen materials from December and January -- all showed, as you point out, that 74% or higher of Asian-American households are online, which is higher than cable television, that Hispanics have gone ahead of whites in the U.S. by anywhere from 4 to 7 percentage points, depending on which survey you cite ... And what Larry Irving (former Clinton Secretary of Commerce) said -- it's still available on our site, you can listen to his words; he said, "I don't believe in any of these surveys," that the digital divide is a "self-evident phenomenon." I think that is in part because many, if not most, of the places that he visits are places that are just coming online, but also human nature to some extent has us as prisoners of our past, and when the past is changed -- when something like the Internet is changing so rapidly, if you lock your perception into 1998, which is the date which the federal government keeps citing, that's like data of 30, 40 years ago for television. It's moving that quickly."
Powell on not creating a new federal virtual entitlement program:
"These all start from goals which are laudable, or sound laudable, such as there are X thousand people who have difficulty seeing or Y number who have difficulty hearing; let's make all the Web sites available to them. But as you start to walk through what's involved, you're saying, well, wait a minute -- this means that we're going to mandate that every site have -- that you can't post text unless there's a way of having oral information. You can't use colors to show, say, red for losses or blue for links for Web sites, unless there is an additional way of explaining that information. So suddenly you're into a very large enterprise, larger than most policy-makers, I think, planned when they started down this road."
Powell on the natural progression of technology adoption:
There's the famous cartoon from The New Yorker of a man walking up to a shop counter, and the caption is "I want some new gadgets -- my old gadgets are getting old." That's the classic early adopter: somebody who can spend $2000 for that first VCR, somebody who will today go to an appliance store and buy a digital TV set, high-definition TV set. That's always where it starts, and if a technology takes off, it can take 20, 30, 40 years to reach 50 percent of the United States. Well, if you date this medium from the Web, or at least the general adoption of the Web, which was basically 90, 93, 94, and on, that's pretty fast. You've reached 50 percent of the United States in six years. That's extraordinary, even if you date it from the very first moment of the Web, which some date as Christmas 1990. That's still less than ten years, and you've seen it spread through all age groups, through all parts of the United States, with the notable exception of reservations. By and large, reservations have terrible or very, very limited telephone service, so that's held back the introduction of Internet service at Indian reservations."
Powell on what the government should be doing:
"The most important thing government can do right now, I think, would be to help Americans find ways to use this new medium -- not to create a new department or a new headquarters somewhere, but to basically say, "We can almost declare a victory now. We've got all of our schools wired; what should we be doing? What are the appropriate educational uses? What are some of the best works going on around the country?" In fact, let's spotlight some of the best applications, some of the best examples around the U.S. That could be incredibly useful, on its own."
Continue to next page for full transcript.
|
|
RealAudio -- High Bandwidth or Low Bandwidth MP3 Download
|
Powell: Well, I think it's some combination of them. The digital divide, at least the way most people think of it and the way it's been presented politically, certainly was the case three, four, five years ago. You just have to think of how quickly this medium has changed. Pre-Web -- meaning, what? 90, 94, 93? The Internet was almost entirely a research and engineering vehicle, and the people who were online were -- you talk about techies, you were a Grade-A-certified techie if you were online before 1993. Very, very few women, very few minorities. But it has really changed, and we're now seeing, this year, on all the surveys, the beginning of a convergence of sex and race on the Internet, until in some surveys they are indistinguishable from census data. Which is not to say that the Internet is a universal medium, but it is to say that it's becoming a mass medium, and, as with television or the telephone, the differences are pretty minor by sex and race. There are some differences, largely by education, so, if you are going to argue there's a divide, that is where the divide occurs. But it means that we have to be more sophisticated in terms of policy and more sophisticated in terms of description of what is going on.
The falling price of computer power and the falling price of Internet access, down to zero if you go through AltaVista or any number of other ISPs now -- that has really taken care of the economic argument. Computers by the end of this year will be approximately the same price as television sets, if not lower, and access to the Internet is already cheaper than access to cable television, so the economic barrier really isn't there. And what you're left with is something which may be more difficult to address, and that is the barrier by education.
Pizzo: Those who are proponents of the digital divide theory say, "Look, back in the early part of the last century, in the 1900s, we had electricity, mostly in telephones, but these were mostly concentrated in cities, and affluent portions of cities at that, and that's why we came up with a Rural Electrification Program. You know, we still have some leftovers of that, in the Tennessee Valley Authority, for example." Why is this any different? Why don't we have a situation today that mirrors what we had then?
Powell: I'd say that the difference is that this has moved faster than anybody expected. When you think of what has happened since the day that Bill Clinton took office -- which is before the Web -- the administration, to their credit, put into place the mechanisms which have been stunningly successful in terms of extending Internet service. By January of this year we had 95 percent of all U.S. schools wired, and we have most classrooms wired. That's remarkable. That's a remarkable achievement. And so in effect we've had the equivalent of the Rural Electrification Program take place, and the real issue now is: "All right, you have the wires coming into the classroom, and you have computers ..." Obviously there's a disparity between affluent school districts and poor school districts, but at least you have the service there, and hardware which, certainly by 1993 standards, is pretty sophisticated. The issue now is, "What do we really do? What are the applications that we want in schools?" And I think that's a more difficult subject than running cable and putting in hardware.
Pizzo: Don't you think that a compelling argument could be made that the digital divide doesn't exist in minority neighborhoods? It exists in the Beltway. I'm always amazed how many of those folks there -- whether it be in the halls of Congress or in the White House -- are at least two to three years behind those of us who are out here actually living in the private sector and using this and being early adopters as we are. These folks really are somewhat clueless at any point in time.
Powell: What we find, quite often, is that there are people who are in policy-making positions in the executive and legislative branch who are proud that they've never done e-mail. It is, I think, to the credit of the justices of the Supreme Court that they got so much right with the CDA decision, almost three years ago.
Pizzo: So, we can construct two theories as to where the roots of this digital divide idea lay, one a cynical theory and one a kinder one -- the cynical one being that they know damn well there's no digital divide but they're looking for some way -- the Democrats are looking for some way -- to re-energize what they perceive to be their minority base in a time of economic affluence. Or, just out of ignorance -- I mean the figures that I've seen published recently -- Jim Glassman just did a good piece pointing out that blacks are now getting online faster than whites, that Hispanics, same thing, and of course Asian-Americans are probably the most wired minority group in the country. So, is this a cynical political ploy or just ignorance?
Powell: I don't claim to be able to get into people's heads, but I do like to listen to what they say. We had a conference here on this subject with former Commerce Secretary Larry Irving, who's probably the most articulate and forceful voice -- even though he's no longer secretary of commerce -- saying there is a digital divide. And we have the latest Forrester reports, the Arthur Andersen study, the Nielsen materials from December, January -- all of which showed, as you point out, that 74% or higher of Asian-American households are online, which is higher than cable television; that Hispanics have gone ahead of whites in the U.S., by anywhere from 4 to 7 percentage points; depending on which survey you cite. And that -- and this is a major caveat -- corrected for income, African-Americans have caught up with whites also. And what Larry said was -- and it's still available on our site, you can listen to his words -- he said, "I don't believe in any of these surveys;" that the digital divide is a "self-evident phenomenon." I think that is in part because many, if not most, of the places that he visits are places that are just coming online. But also, human nature to some extent has us as prisoners of our past, and when the past is changed -- when something like the Internet is changing so rapidly -- if you lock your perception into 1998, which is the day which the federal government keeps citing, that's like data of thirty, forty years ago for television. It's moving that quickly. In fact, Katarina Walsh, who conducts the annual Forrester survey on Internet use in the U.S., said that if you miss Christmas, if you do your sampling in November versus in January -- she said Christmas of 1999 and Christmas of 1998 were occasions when there were huge increases in Internet use from the home. She says, if you miss Christmas, your numbers are wrong. Well, that's an amazing rate of change, and John Markoff of The New York Times and others are saying that, if anything, the change is accelerating. So just being two years off can give you a very different view of who is online and how the Internet is being used.
|
Pizzo: I was talking to a supporter of the digital divide yesterday. He lived in Silicon Valley and was saying, "Pizzo, just go down to East Palo Alto and look in the schools. They have lousy and old computers, or they have no computers, and the student-to-computer ratio is too high." And my reply was, "Well, yeah, but that's a problem that goes across the educational system; poor communities have poor schools, and it's not just the computers. They have lousy and outdated textbooks, they underpay their teachers and so they don't get the best teachers," so it's not just a computer issue at bear here. So really, if Clinton wants to pour $2.4 billion dollars, which is what his digital divide program calls for, into something, wouldn't it be better spent simply upgrading educational systems?
Powell: Education is almost certainly one of the most appropriate areas, particularly for federal intervention, in terms of providing the systems. As we approach 100 percent of all schools wired, we see now in the President's announcements a search for new directions. This is, they'll still be collecting the tax through the telephone charges, and they'll still be having the funds come into the federal treasury, but now the schools are basically all wired, at least in terms of having service extended to them. There's the question: What do you do with the funding? And there's some very different kinds of ideas which are being floated. You've done some research -- I know you see some very untraditional things that are being supported, some of which are beginning to get the attention of people in Congress who are saying, "Well, wait a minute, we never really authorized some of the other activities."
For example, one phrase that the President used in one of his speeches in California was that there's a proposal to have federally funded community centers in "one thousand communities" was his phrase, across the United States. Well, what are those community centers for? Is it an adult education center? Is it some kind of empowerment center? I'd really like to know a bit more about what these community centers in a thousand communities across the U.S. are going to be.
There are other initiatives that are coming up, promised for late spring, meaning the next month, month and a half, which will involve efforts to make Web sites accessible to the handicapped, either through trying to expand the American with Disabilities Act to the Internet by saying that Internet Web sites are a public accommodation and/or administratively through the application of new rules that have been promulgated by the Justice Department for federal government Web sites. These all start from goals which are laudable, or sound laudable, such as there are X thousand people who have difficulty seeing or Y number who have difficulty hearing, let's make all the Web sites available to them. But as you start to walk through what's involved, you're saying, well, wait a minute, this means that we're going to mandate that every site have -- that you can't post text unless there's a way of having oral information. You can't use colors to show, say, red for losses or blue for links for Web sites, unless there is an additional way of explaining that information. So suddenly you're into a very large enterprise, larger than most policy-makers, I think, planned when they started down this road.
Pizzo: The other thing that I think that you mentioned in one of your articles that I thought was right on the money was that all technologies over history, whether they be automobiles, telephones, or television sets, began when there were concentrations within the wealthier, affluent communities, and then trickled on through, became commonplace appliances right down to the poverty level, where you find autos, telephones, and TV sets today. And the same progression is occurring now with computers, only at an exponentially faster rate.
Powell: Yes, much, much faster. There's the famous cartoon from The New Yorker of a man walking up to a counter, a shop counter, and the caption is, "I want some new gadgets -- my old gadgets are getting old." And that's the classic early adopter: somebody who can spend $2000 for that first VCR, somebody who will today go to an appliance store and buy a high-definition TV set. That's always where it starts, and if a technology takes off, it can take 20, 30, 40 years to reach 50 percent of the United States. Well, if you date this medium from the Web, or at least the general adoption of the Web, which was basically 90, 93, 94, and on, that's pretty fast. You've reached 50 percent of the United States in six years. That's extraordinary, even if you date it from the very first moment of the Web, which some date as Christmas 1990. That's still less than ten years, and you've seen it spread through all age groups, through all parts of the United States, with the notable exception of reservations. By and large reservations have terrible, or very, very limited telephone service, so that's held back the introduction of Internet service at Indian reservations.
Pizzo: And at any point along the way, whether it be with any of these technologies, had it been automobiles or television sets -- at any point along the way, if you had taken a snapshot of the demographic ownership, you could have made a compelling argument in 1930 that there was a transportation divide or in 1955 that there was an entertainment divide.
Powell: Right, and certainly if you go back -- unquestionably television was a weak medium at first, but I can remember -- you talked in your introduction a bit about my father's career -- I can remember people in the church who didn't make much money who were getting televisions in the early 1950s. The phrase was "on time," meaning "on installments," and yes, you might be paying a high interest rate, but people were getting television sets, and the same thing is happening now. You see it happening particularly among families with children. If you want to look at adoption of Internet by low-income Americans, look for households that have children, because A) children see it and get it and want their parents to get it, to acquire it, and B) particularly in minority and low-income households, which have always been disproportionate consumers of media, parents understand that it's important for their children's education, so they're willing to make the sacrifice to bring this new medium into the house.
Pizzo: Since we've already acknowledged that there is some -- some -- validity to the term "digital divide" -- maybe not as much as Clinton and Gore would like us to believe -- what would you propose being the most important thing government can do to close it?
Powell: The most important thing government can do right now I think would be to help Americans find ways to use this new medium, not to create a new department or a new headquarters somewhere, but to basically say, "We can almost declare a victory now. We've got all of our schools wired; what should we be doing? What are the appropriate educational uses? What are some of the best works going on around the country?" In fact, let's spotlight some of the best applications, some of the best examples around the U.S. That could be incredibly useful, on its own.
Pizzo: Well, listen, thanks a million for talking to us today and putting what's going to be a hot election year issue into some sort of sane perspective for us. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Adam.
Powell: Thank you.
Stephen Pizzo is an award-winning non-fiction author, and newsman for the O'Reilly Network.
Read more The Pizzo Files columns.
Discuss this article in the O'Reilly Network General Forum.
Copyright © 2009 O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Listen to this interview