Digital Divide and Ethics
Wallace Koehler
University of Oklahoma
wkoehler@ou.edu
Abstract
The digital divide issue incorporates two or more of the values librarians recognize as primary. These include literacy, equality of access, and information literacy. The literacy question and the access question are ageless. The term digital divide means the difference in access to digital information, skills, hardware and software by information "haves" and "have nots."  The term has been used in two ways -- to describe the gap between haves and have nots within countries like the United States or Brazil. It is also used to describe the differences between the post industrial information age countries lie the countries of North America and Western Europe and the Newly Industrializing Countries (NIC) of Africa, parts of Asia, and parts of South and Central America.

Introduction
What is this thing called the "digital divide?"  And what are the ethical and moral implications of the digital divide for our time? What must we do, if anything, to address the digital divide?
The term "digital divide" has been coined to describe first a gap in understanding, capability, and access to technology in order to exploit the digital revolution in information. The digital divide has been identified to have two topographies. The first is a domestic one - countries both developed and in development have found that there are at least two groups in their societies. One group -- the "haves" -- has access to information technology (computers, software, high speed Internet access, etc) and the information to use that information technology (education, training, technical sophistication, etc.). The other group -- the "have nots" -- lacks access to any or all of the facilities and abilities held by the haves. It is posited that the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" may be so deep and so wide that the have-nots cannot achieve the same degree of competence and therefore access to social and economic goods that the haves control unless there is active intervention by various elements of society. These elements or groups include governments, schools, libraries, and other agents. Unless social agents intervene, it is further argued, have-nots may be relegated to a second class knowledge status and be unable to pull themselves from that condition even with future intervention by governments or other agents.
The second definition is similar, except that it is focused on countries or regions rather than individuals. Unless countries build their information infrastructures -- and here infrastructures include not only physical infrastructure like telephone and optical cable systems, satellite access, cell phone networks, and so on; computing systems; access to software; but it also includes the training and education of human resources  -- these countries are destined to fall ever farther behind. Again, at some point, the digital divide may become so wide that overcoming the barriers the divide erects may become insurmountable.
If we accept these hypotheses -- that the digital divide at the individual, national and international levels is indeed an accurate description of a current social dynamic, do we then have ethical, moral, and/or legal obligations to respond to it? Do we have an obligation to ameliorate the consequences of the digital divide and if so, what steps must we take?

The Digital Divide in Context
I suggest first that the digital divide can be defined in the context of three fundamental information ethics concerns: the right of access, literacy, and information literacy. Generally, "literacy" is defined as the ability to read and process intellectually the information acquired through reading. Reading of course is defined in its broadest sense. Information literacy would better be called information technology competence, for it implies the ability to use existing technology at a certain ability level in order to compete successfully with other exploiting information and information technologies. 
	These issues and concern predate any thought of digital information processing and transmission by thousands of years. These are second only to service to the patron as first among the values that librarians recognize as important in the profession (Koehler et al 2000, Dole et al 2000).

History of Access
Consider that 150 years ago most people never ventured more than 20 miles from their homes, that fifty years ago only 20% of the American population had ever ridden in an airplane, and that today in some countries only 20% of the population have ever made a telephone call. Does the new digital reality create a new set of information "haves" and "have nots" that is somehow more perfidious than existed before? Or are we looking at "business as usual?"
To put the question another way, have we experienced a Kuhnian paradigm shift in the information environment and therefore perhaps in society? Is that paradigm shift limited to the information environment, information science, or to information theory? Or has nothing nearly so dramatic taken place, and do we continue to face and address the same set of questions in new dress? 
Or to put the question in a somewhat different way, engineers speak of plateau changes. Plateau changes occur where a parameter change affects in some fundamental way the behavior of some object or some thing. For example, when an aircraft exceeds the speed of sound, there is a fundamental aerodynamic change. The physics changes. Airplanes fly differently. We see this by wing configurations, among other things.  Another example is superconductivity. Electricity flows through certain materials with no resistance once temperatures are reduced beyond certain critical levels or plateaus if you will. 
Can we argue that the new realities in information access, transfer, and management in some way represent a paradigm shift, a plateau change? If so, does this create a rift so profound between information haves and have nots of such a magnitude that it cannot or will not be overcome? 
Frederick Kilgour (1998), writing in The Evolution of the Book, describes the various stages in the evolution of the book. He defines books as relatively portable artifacts that store human knowledge. Books may take many forms and utilize a variety of symbol sets to convey any of the manifest forms of knowledge (p. 3). Kilgour proceeds to discuss the various manifestations of "book" from clay tablets through the electronic format.  
It should be remembered that access to information has often been seen as a two-edged sword. New information systems and efficient access and publication are correctly perceived as threats to the existing social order. The printing press, the public library, and other technologies and information institutions not only inform and educate, they raise expectations. Consider the ramifications of the invention of moveable type by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century. It has been argued that there must have been a confluence of a number of forces for any given set of technologies to impact society in a meaningful way. Consider the social and intellectual forces of the day. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were to witness significant reform, to include Martin Luther's 95 Theses in 1517. Luther was further to argue the importance of Biblical translation in 1530. Bibles translated into local languages and in the hands of the general population proved to be a powerful tool and often the undoing of the status quo ante.
Improvements in printing technologies, including papers, metallurgy, energy, distribution systems, all led to reduced costs and a proliferating demand for the printed. This went hand in hand with increased literacy. And in the end, all of these forces may well have contributed to not only a better informed and socially broader populace but to a redefinition in the political, social, moral, and economic structures and beliefs. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword. 

Digital Divide and Ethics
The digital divide raises once again a number of fundamental equity and ethical questions. Is the digital divide simply another manifestation of social, economic, and other cultural divisions that, in time, will recede in importance? Various groups have long debated recall that access to education, to books, to information in various cultures,, at various times. Will an enlightened self-interest or public policy close the digital rift just as it has it a broad way provided access to literacy through education in most societies? Or is digital literacy of such import that to be left behind now is to be left behind forever?

Digital Divide Issues
There is an assumption underlying the digital divide issue that the digital divide is a social ill and should be eliminated. I accept that as a given. Is the digital divide a separate issue, or is it part of a larger concern. Stephen Foster (2000, p. 439) has argued that "…the underlying concerns surrounding the issue of the digital divide are actually more about the nature and future of education than about the current distribution of technology." I suspect Foster is right. But we need to explore the assumption.
If the digital divide is, in fact, as social ill, then some interesting questions are raised. The one often raised first is who should pay for reducing the divide. Part of that answer is governments and part is foundations. But certainly part has to be individuals. If governments and we can include in under governments many schools, libraries, and other institutions are to narrow the digital divide, are they to do it with training, equipment, infrastructure, funding, regulation, or some combination of all of these? How quickly is this task to be accomplished?
	Inherent in all such questions is the belief that narrowing the domestic or international digital divide would be a social good. We ought to consider this question carefully. Or, to put it a little differently, are there social and infrastructure changes that must take place before narrowing the digital divide makes sense. Consider the much-quoted statistic that in many places in the world, nearly 80% of the population has never made a telephone call much less used a computer. In many places, vast majorities of the population cannot read or write. Before we concern ourselves with digital literacy, should we not first concern ourselves with literacy? 
The "serial" answer to the question is "first one then the other." The "parallel" answer is that both can occur simultaneously. It is possible to close both the literacy and the digital divides at the same time. It may well be that as one focuses on the digital divide, it will spill over into the literacy area. 
The second set of problems involves the disproportionate distribution of goods and services between elites and everyone else. The digital divide in fact is nothing new. Societies have almost always debated distribution and redistribution policies for a wide range of social goods, including quality education, information access, literacy training, health care, infrastructure development, and so on. Many countries have used public policy to either divide populations or to bring them together. The use of public policy leverage is inherent in the digital divide debate.
In the United States there has been a several pronged response to the digital divide. The Clinton Administration, the first American government to have had to be concerned with the digital divide, responded with e-rates and other support for increased public school and public library Internet access. State and local governments also invested heavily in wiring schools. 
It should perhaps be pointed out that this is by no means a unique public policy response. Federal and state governments have long supported an equality of access to public utilities, consider universal telephone access requirements and the rural electrification programs begun in the 1930s. There are interesting differences as well. The government required electric and telephone companies to make their services available everywhere to everyone. These policies had in part a residential focus, households were to have electric and telephone service and in the United States today most do. 
This has not been the approach taken for digital services. The Clinton Administration was to focus on public schools and libraries. Moreover, cable television companies have never been required to provide universal service, in part because cable is perceived to offer entertainment rather than a public need and because there are alternative delivery systems -- like broadcast television and satellite service.
If the digital divide is to be closed, there is a need to insure that an adequate network infrastructure is developed, people are trained to use Internet facilities and to understand the Internet and its limitations, and hardware and software must be available and usable without unreasonable hardship. 
Finally, let's ask the most dangerous of questions: is there an inherent right to access to information? Take, for example, government publications. In the United States, most (but not all) government publications and many underwritten with government funds are considered to be in the public domain. From an intellectual property and copyright perspective, this body of information is freely accessible and may be copied at will.  In the United Kingdom, the Crown holds the copyright and can limit the right to copy and access. A higher order question that might be asked is "do we have a right to be informed?" Well, perhaps not (Wellman 1999; Morehead 1995) or can we distinguish between passive rights "to be informed" and active rights to seek information?

Players. 
In the United States, the US Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) was given the responsibility by the Clinton Administration to address the digital divide in the United States. Beginning in 1995, the NTIA has published a series of reports on the digital divide in the United States. These are:
Falling Through the Net: A Survey of the "Have Nots" in Rural and Urban America, July 1995 (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fallingthru.html) A survey of telephone penetration, the rural and central city poor are more likely to lack telephone connectivity than are other Americans.
Falling Through the Net II: New Data on the Digital Divide, July 1998 (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/net2/) is a study of computer distribution and use. There remains a digital divide based on ethnic, income, racial and other characteristics. 
Falling Through The Net: Defining the Digital Divide, July 1999 (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn99/contents.html)  examines households for telephones, computers, and Internet connectivity The digital divide is described as a civil rights issue.
"...[H]ouseholds with incomes of less than $20,000 and Black households, for example, are twice as likely to get Internet access through a public library or community center than are households earning more than $20,000 or White households. Similarly, low-income households and households with lower education levels are obtaining access at schools at far higher rates." (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn99/part3.html).

Falling Through The Net: Toward Digital Inclusion, October 2000 (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn00/contents00.html) continues the same analysis but also explores quality of connectivity (speed) and disability issues.

Federal policy responses include the E-rate program. The E-rate program allows ISPs to provide discounts to schools, libraries, and similar institutions. 

Public Access. 
•	Public Institutions - libraries, schools, other public buildings
In the United States, public libraries have taken much of the load for closing the digital divide. The National Commission on Libraries and Information Science commissions a report every two years on public library Internet access. The 2000 study reports that nearly all US public libraries now have public access Internet connections, 94.5% up from 73.3% in 1998. Gains are equally spectacular in areas defined as in poverty - 72.5% to 79.5% from 1998 to 93.5% to 95.8% in 2000 (Bertot and McClure p. 3). One might conclude that the digital divide in the United States has narrowed to parity with the whole country. 
	Public libraries can be an important vehicle for providing Internet access to all segments of a society. The public library movement is strong in the United States, but the public library as a major public institution is not a universal one. Where the public library is not a major social actor, alternatives must be found.
	In the United States, we have confused the role of public libraries as a vehicle of access to the Internet. And we have perhaps confused the role of the Web document as "book" following Kilgour's (1998) definition. The obverse to access as a library role is the selection function. Libraries select for their collections to meet the needs of their patrons. We have confused the Internet as "library" and have exercised little positive selection over the Internet. This has led to a debate between those who would limit access to the Internet through filtering and censorship and those who decry filtering and censorship as an intrusion on the rights of libraries and their patrons. If, however, the trends described by Bertot and McClure continue, we can expect to find public libraries playing a larger role in addressing the digital divide, to include the ever important education and familiarization functions.
	There is a second, interesting argument against the use of technology as a social control. Thimbleby (1998) has argued:
The effect of encouraging parents and other authorities to be believe that [filtering technology] is a solution will be to make them less involved, in the limit this will atrophy everyones' moral skills, just when understanding moral issues is starting to have global significance.

The digital divide is just one of those moral issues.

•	Non-governmental, Not for Profits.  
Foundations can play a role in addressing the digital divide. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (http://www.gatesfoundation.org) has supported technology grants to public libraries in the United States and Canada. They have targeted low-income communities as the first recipients of Gates grants. The Gates Foundation has extended its reach outside North America with an agreement with Chilean libraries to provide hardware, software and training. In July 2000, the Helsinki (Finland) Public Library was the recipient of the first Access to Learning Award for its work in increasing Internet access in the library.
	The Benton Foundation has funded several studies and helps support the digital divide network (http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org/).  The Benton Foundation has sponsored or featured studies arguing for a variety of strategies to close the digital divide from social organizations like youth or faith based organizations to more residential connectivity.
	The Internet Society (ISOC) has developed programs to assist countries in development. ISOC's journal On the Internet frequently publishes articles from or about Internet development in the NICs. It also sponsors training. The Internet Society Network Training Workshop for Countries in the Early Stages of Internetworking conducts workshops to provide training in network management. These workshops are conducted in both English and French to meet the needs of peoples in anglophone and francophone countries. The Internet Society has taken the view that through training and other assistance, countries in development can overcome the digital divide (http://www.isoc.org/educpillar/).
A final interesting example is the WorldSpace Direct Media Service (DMS). It now provides or seeks to provide L-band radio and simplex high bandwidth Internet service from its satellite to Kenya and parts of India and Indonesia. It offers fixed programming information downloads cached at the client. WorldSpace is however, in "conflict, with the US Department of Defense because both DoD and WorldSpace seek to use the same frequencies. For a discussion of the issue, see "The Battle for Bandwidth," Air Force Magazine, 82, 10, 1999. http://www.afa.org/magazine/1099bandwidth.html)

Conclusions		
This paper has touched on the digital divide question by raising questions. It has been suggested that the digital divide as a concern is not something new, but it is rather a new manifestation of an old problem -- access and literacy. Information professionals of all kinds have been concerned with whether and how to address access and literacy since there were information professionals. We have had different premises and different answers, but the questions have been similar.
	There is a new concern, but one that again re-echoes earlier concerns, that those on the wrong side of the digital divide are destined to second class status unless something is done and done soon. This question is still debated. If there is a need for intervention, then what kind of intervention is needed, by which social institutions, with what degree of emphasis and concern. 
	We can explore the response of various institutions as models and as guides. I am most familiar with the thinking and policy initiatives in my own country and therefore I have offered them as examples. It is easy to prescribe new infrastructure and new curricula. It is far more difficult to implement the prescriptions and to accommodate the new infrastructure and new thinking into our cultures. Librarians and other information professionals necessarily are to be the leaders. As leaders, we need a sound understanding of the issues and the barriers that impair implementation of solutions.
	LIDA 2001 is a course. I present these comments to raise questions rather than to impose my own beliefs. I wish to prompt thinking and debate rather than to impose closure. Thank you.

References
Bertot, John Carlo and Charles R. McClure, Public Libraries ad the Internet 2000, Summary Findings and Data Tables, http://www.nclis.gov/statsurv/2000plo.pdf

Dole, Wanda V., Jitka M. Hurych, and Wallace Koehler (2000), "Values for Librarians in the Information Age: An Expanded Examination." Library Management 21, 6/7: 285-297

Foster,  Stephen P. (2000). "The Digital Divide: Some Reflections." International Information & Library Review, 32 (3/4): 437-51.

Kilgour, Frederick G. (1998). The Evolution of the Book.  N.Y.: Oxford University Press. 

Koehler, Wallace, Jitka Hurych, Wanda Dole, and Joanna Wall, (2000) "Ethical Values of Information and Library Professionals -- An Expanded Analysis." International Information & Library Review, 32 (3/4): 485-506.

Morehead, J. (1995). "The Myth of Public Access to Federal Government Information as a Constitutional Right." The Serials Librarian 26 (2): 1-26.

Thimbleby, Harold. (1998) Personal Boundaries/Global Stage. First Monday 3 (3). http:www.firstmonday.org/issue3_3/thimbleby/index.html

Wellman, Carl (1999). The Proliferation of Rights: Moral Progress or Empty Rhetoric? Boulder: Westview.

WorldSpace Foundation http://www.worldspace.com/aboutus/ws_foundation.htm