Virtually no policy: modulating the digital divide

Markets in personal computers are moving very quickly, as populations in both the advanced industrial nations and the developing world become more familiar with online resources including the World Wide Web, email and data bases. The Internet is now integrated into the everyday life of a high proportion of Americans. In early 2000, roughly 55 million went online on a typical day, using email, seeking information or completing online financial transactions (Pew Internet and American Life Project 'Who's Not Online'). Personal computers are now almost as affordable as televisions and may - according to some predictions - become as endemic a feature of private life and public communication systems. This is an unpredictable expansion. No one really knows how dynamic the market will be, what its boundaries are, or atwhatpointit will reach saturation. Market research is struggling to keep pace with statistical tracking and user interviews. Governments are also trying - with their often slower and more involved intellectual technologies - to plot these changes and to plan for their impact. There has been an explosion of data gathering and publication, matched by strong public interest, especially where information has attempted to track developing trends and differences between the generations.