Tech Focus: Bridging the Gap

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Jorge Rojas is 22, but unlike most people his age, he has never been on the Internet.

A farm worker in Watsonville who came here from Mexico City six years ago, Rojas doesn't speak English and lives in modest surroundings.

He doesn't have a computer at home and the only time he uses one is to search for books at the public library.

Yet even Rojas has felt the lure of the technology boom.

“Everyday, I hear on the radio and the television, 'Get connected to the Internet,'” he said. “I would like to buy a computer so I can also be connected.”

Rojas is not alone. Even as the Internet has taken hold of America's pulse and set up permanent residence in the country's consciousness, many individuals remain excluded from the digital revolution.

The gap between the haves and have nots has moved to center stage in the debate over the impact of the technology boom. This “digital divide” separates low-income families, minorities, and the disabled from more affluent whites in areas such as computer ownership and Internet usage.

The U.S. Department of Commerce sounded the alarm about this divide in a seminal 1995 report, Falling Through the Net: A Survey of the “Have Nots” in Rural and Urban America. The survey found that minority groups, and people in inner city and rural areas were lagging far behind the rest of the population in computer usage and Internet access.

Many of those problems persist. According to the most recent update of the Commerce Department study in August 2000:

• Only 12.7 percent of households with incomes of $15,000 or less were accessing the Internet, compared with 77.7 percent of households with incomes of $75,000 or more.
• People with disabilities are only half as likely to access the Internet as those without disabilities.
• While 46.1 percent of white households were using the Internet in August 2000, only 23.5 percent of black households and 23.6 percent of Hispanic households were. Among Asian American households, 56.8 percent were online.

The gap among ethnic groups has shown signs of closing in recent years. From 1998 to 2000, the number black households with Internet access increased 110 percent, while Hispanics increased 87 percent, according to the Department of Commerce. That compares with a 55 percent increase for white households.

Some believe statistics like these show the digital divide is not as significant as it was several years ago.

Adam Clayton Powell III, Vice President of Technology and Programs for The Freedom Forum, a group that promotes a free press, feels the divide is “closing rapidly” and that “race and ethnicity are unquestionably not playing a role” in the gap.

Even those without access seem to share the feeling that getting on the Internet is important.

Ninety-three percent of people without Internet access believe computer skills are vital to success and 83 percent believe understanding technology is crucial to success, according to a national survey released by the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union in October 2000.

But the key to getting those people online is whether they'll come to see the Internet as something really useful in their lives, suggests Ruben Barrales, president of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley, an organization that launches initiatives with the aim of providing support to technology businesses in the Bay Area.

“Some of it is driven by what many say is the next iteration of the digital divide, and that's relevant content,” he said. “If the Internet doesn't offer anything relevant to their lives, they're not going to log on.”

The government also has initiated several plans to help bridge the gap. One is the “Excess Equipment Donation Program,” in which federal agencies recently gave $5.4 million worth of computer equipment to universities and minority communities.

In part because of initiatives by the Clinton Administration, the number of public schools connected to the Internet increased from 35 percent in 1994 to 95 percent in 1999, while the percentage of classrooms with Internet access grew from 3 percent to 63 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Computer, communications and other corporations also have donated money and resources to help bridge the gap. For example, the foundations for AT&T, Bell South and American Online are helping fund the Digital Divide Network, an organization working with the National Urban League to develop strategies for reaching people being left behind in he information revolution.

In addition, non-profit organizations have lent a helping hand .

One beneficiary of those efforts is Chela Cranshaw, a former musician who lives in Oakland and wanted in on the new media surge she saw all around her.

When Cranshaw's sister went from three years on unemployment to a $55,000-a-year job because of a five-week training course in Web design, Cranshaw knew she could do the same.

“Five weeks, and I can make more money than my mom makes, and she's a lawyer,” said Cranshaw.

The secret is Opnet, a non-profit organization in San Francisco with the motto: “bridging the digital divide.”

Opnet was founded in 1997 by Dan Geiger, a University of California, Berkeley business school graduate. It targets women, ethnic minorities, and low-income people from 18-30 years old.

Students are taught the basics of web design and new media. They are also taught skills essential in any job, such as how communicate in an interview and negotiate a salary.

The five-week training period is then followed by a paid internship in the industry. Participants receive career-long counseling, training, and job-placement assistance.

“It was a very intensive five weeks. They told us, 'Cut off your friends, your family — tell your boyfriend to move out,'” said Cranshaw.

Opnet trained 172 students between August 1997 and September 2000. According to follow-up surveys by Opnet of participants, 80 percent have been placed in jobs or are currently completing internships.

In addition, the income of the students has increased 165 percent, from $11,500 before the program to $30,500 for graduates, according to Opnet. Current starting salaries are from $30,000 up to $45,000.

Earlier this year Opnet was visited by Vice President Al Gore, who described the program as “absolutely critical to closing the digital divide…we want to do it here first, and use the blueprint to do it nationally.”

Now on the verge of creating her own Web-design company, Cranshaw says she has found fulfillment unattainable in dead-end minimum wage jobs.

“It gives you a sense of worth and empowerment...you're not obsolete in the world,” she said.

Despite success stories such as Cranshaw's, there are some who say simply improving access to technology does not address the far deeper economic disparities in the United States.

“It is utopian and misleading to think that technology will solve the problems of inequality in our society,” said Mark Lloyd, executive director of the Civil Rights Forum on Communication Policy in Washington, D.C.

The real issue, according to Lloyd, is not a technological divide, but rather an economic divide.

“It is not fundamentally a gap of access to computers, it is a gap of wealth and access to opportunity,” he said. “Unless we wrestle with these problems, we will not solve the digital divide.”

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