An Economic and therefore Governmental Issue

While the digital divide might bring up the idea that enterprises will be able to sell more and more computers during the next years another truth looks as if there was no hope for a certain percentage of the population to get out of their marginalization, their position of being "have nots".

Studies show that the issue of different colors of skin play a role in this, but more than "racial" issues it is income, age and education that decides about the have and have nots.

There exist ~ 103 million households in the USA.
~6 million do not even have telephone access. Why should they care about computers?

The digital divide cuts the world into centers and peripheries, not into nations, as it runs through the boarder between the North and the South as well as through nations.

http://www.digitaldivide.gov/
http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org/
http://www.pbs.org/digitaldivide/
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-344552.html
http://racerelations.about.com/newsissues/racerelations/msubdigdivide.htm
http://www.techweek.com/articles/11-1-99/divide.htm
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/net2/falling.html

The most different institutions with various interests in their background work in that field; not rarely paid by governments, which are interested in inhabitants, connected to the net and economy.
see also: http://www.washington.edu/wto/digital/

Searching information about the digital divide one will find informations saying that it is growing all the time whereas other studies suggest the contrary, like this one
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-341054.html

TEXTBLOCK 1/1 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611730/100438659326
 
Vinton Cerf

Addressed as one of the fathers of the Internet, Vinton Cerf together with Robert Kahn developed the TCP/IP protocol suite, up to now the de facto-communication standard for the Internet, and also contributed to the development of other important communication standards. The early work on the protocols broke new ground with the realization of a multi-network open architecture.

In 1992, he co-founded the Internet Society where he served as its first President and later Chairman.

Today, Vinton Cerf is Senior Vice President for Internet Architecture and Technology at WorldCom, one of the world's most important ICT companies

Vinton Cerf's web site: http://www.wcom.com/about_the_company/cerfs_up/

http://www.isoc.org/
http://www.wcom.com/
INDEXCARD, 1/1