Let’s look at the parallel growth of digital technology in the twentieth century next.

Early Computing

In the early days of computing, computers were seen as devices for making calculations, storing data, and automating business processes. However, as the devices evolved, it became apparent that many of the functions of telecommunications could be integrated into the computer. During the 1980s, many organizations began combining their once-separate telecommunications and information-systems departments into an information technology, or IT, department. This ability for computers to communicate with one another and, maybe more importantly, to facilitate communication between individuals and groups, has been an important factor in the growth of computing over the past several decades.

In the Beginning: ARPANET

The story of the Internet, and networking in general, can be traced back to the late 1950s. The United States was in the depths of the Cold War with the U.S.S.R., and each nation closely watched the other to determine which would gain a military or intelligence advantage. In 1957, the Soviets surprised the U.S. with the launch of Sputnik, propelling us into the space age. In response to Sputnik, the U.S. Government created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), whose initial role was to ensure that the U.S. was not surprised again. It was from ARPA, now called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), that the Internet first sprang.

ARPA was the center of computing research in the 1960s, but there was just one problem: many of the computers could not talk to each other. In 1968, ARPA sent out a request for proposals (RFP) for a communication technology that would allow different computers located around the country to be integrated together into one network. Twelve companies responded to the request, and a company named Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (BBN) won the contract. They began work right away and were able to complete the job just one year later. In September, 1969, the ARPANET was turned on. The first four nodes were at UCLA, Stanford, MIT, and the University of Utah.

The Internet and the World Wide Web

Over the next decade, the ARPANET grew and gained popularity. During this time, other networks also came into existence. Different organizations were connected to different networks. This led to a problem: the networks could not talk to each other. Each network used its own proprietary language, or protocol, to send information back and forth. This problem was solved by the invention of transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP). TCP/IP was designed to allow networks running on different protocols to have an intermediary protocol that would allow them to communicate. So as long as your network supported TCP/IP, you could communicate with all of the other networks running TCP/IP. TCP/IP quickly became the standard protocol and allowed networks to communicate with each other. It is from this breakthrough that we first got the term Internet, which simply means “an interconnected network of networks.”

As we moved into the 1980s, computers were added to the Internet at an increasing rate. These computers were primarily from government, academic, and research organizations. Much to the surprise of the engineers, the early popularity of the Internet was driven by the use of electronic mail.

Using the Internet in these early days was not easy. In order to access information on another server, you had to know how to type in the commands necessary to access it, as well as know the name of that device. That all changed in 1990, when Tim Berners-Lee introduced his World Wide Web project, which provided an easy way to navigate the Internet through the use of linked text (hypertext). The World Wide Web gained even more steam with the release of the Mosaic browser in 1993, which allowed graphics and text to be combined together as a way to present information and navigate the Internet. The Mosaic browser took off in popularity and was soon superseded by Netscape Navigator, the first commercial web browser, in 1994. The Internet and the World Wide Web were now poised for growth. The chart below shows the growth in users from the early days until now.

The Dot-Com Bubble

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Internet was being managed by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF had restricted commercial ventures on the Internet, which meant that no one could buy or sell anything online. In 1991, the NSF transferred its role to three other organizations, thus getting the U.S. government out of direct control over the Internet and essentially opening up commerce online.

This new commercialization of the Internet led to what is now known as the dot-com bubble. A frenzy of investment in new dot-com companies took place in the late 1990s, running up the stock market to new highs on a daily basis. This investment bubble was driven by the fact that investors knew that online commerce would change everything. Unfortunately, many of these new companies had poor business models and ended up with little to show for all of the funds that were invested in them. In 2000 and 2001, the bubble burst and many of these new companies went out of business. Many companies also survived, including the still-thriving Amazon (started in 1994) and eBay (1995). After the dot-com bubble burst, a new reality became clear: in order to succeed online, e-business companies would need to develop real business models and show that they could survive financially using this new technology.

Web 2.0

In the first few years of the World Wide Web, creating and putting up a website required a specific set of knowledge. One had to know how to set up a server on the World Wide Web, how to get a domain name, how to write web pages in HTML, and how to troubleshoot various technical issues as they came up. Someone who did these jobs for a website became known as a webmaster.

As the web gained in popularity, it became more and more apparent that those who did not have the skills to be a webmaster still wanted to create online content and have their own piece of the web. This need was met with new technologies that provided a website framework for those who wanted to put content online. Blogger and Wikipedia are examples of these early Web 2.0 applications, which allowed anyone with something to say a place to go and say it, without the need for understanding HTML or web-server technology.

Starting in the early 2000s, Web 2.0 applications began a second bubble of optimism and investment. It seemed that everyone wanted their own blog or photo-sharing site. Here are some of the companies that came of age during this time: MySpace (2003), Photobucket (2003), Flickr (2004), Facebook (2004), WordPress (2005), Tumblr (2006), and Twitter (2006). The ultimate indication that Web 2.0 had taken hold was when Time magazine named “You” its “Person of the Year” in 2006.

Social Networking

The Internet was originally designed as a way for scientists and researchers to share information and computing power among themselves. However, as soon as electronic mail was invented, it began driving demand for the Internet. This wasn’t what the developers had in mind, but it turned out that people connecting to people was the killer app for the Internet.

The Digital Divide

The Internet has wired the world. Today, it is just as simple to communicate with someone on the other side of the world as it is to talk to someone next door. But keep in mind that many businesses attempted to outsource different needs in technology, only to discover that near-sourcing (outsourcing to countries to which your country is physically connected) had greater advantage.

The Internet is truly a worldwide phenomenon. From its initial beginnings in the United States in the 1970s to the development of the World Wide Web in the 1990s to the social networks and e-commerce of today, the Internet has continued to increase the integration between countries, making globalization a fact of life for citizens all over the world.

Source: International Telecommunication Union (via World Bank) | OurWorldInData.org/internet • CC BY

As the Internet continues to make inroads across the world, it is also creating a separation between those who have access to this global network and those who do not. This separation is called the “digital divide” and is of great concern.

The digital divide can occur between countries, regions, or even neighborhoods. In many cities in the United States, there are pockets with little or no Internet access, while just a few miles away high-speed broadband is common. Solutions to the digital divide have had mixed success over the years. Many times just providing Internet access and/or computing devices is not enough to bring true Internet access to a country, region, or neighborhood.

A New Understanding of the Digital Divide

In 2006, web-usability consultant Jakob Nielsen wrote an article that got to the heart of our understanding of this problem. In his article he breaks the digital divide up into three stages: the economic divide, the usability divide, and the empowerment divide.

• Economic divide. This is what many call the digital divide. The economic divide is the idea that some people can afford to have a computer and Internet access while others cannot. Because of Moore’s Law, the price of hardware has continued to drop and, at this point, we can now access digital technologies, such as smartphones, for very little. Nielsen asserts that for all intents and purposes, the economic divide is a moot point and we should not focus our resources on solving it.
• Usability divide. Usability is concerned with the fact that “technology remains so complicated that many people couldn’t use a computer even if they got one for free.” And even for those who can use a computer, accessing all the benefits of having one is beyond their understanding. Included in this group are those with low literacy and seniors. According to Nielsen, we know how to help these users, but we are not doing it because there is little profit in doing so.
• Empowerment divide. Empowerment is the most difficult to solve. It is concerned with how we use technology to empower ourselves. Very few users truly understand the power that digital technologies can give them. In his article, Nielsen explains that his and others’ research has shown that very few users contribute content to the Internet, use advanced search, or can even distinguish paid search ads from organic search results. Many people will limit what they can do online by accepting the basic, default settings of their computer and not work to understand how they can truly be empowered.

Understanding the digital divide using these three stages provides a more nuanced view of how we can work to alleviate it. More work needs to be done to address the second and third stages of the digital divide for a more holistic solution.

Refining the Digital Divide

The Miniwatts Marketing Group, host of Internet World Stats, has sought in 2018 to further clarify the meaning of digital divide by acknowledging that the divide is more than just who does or does not have access to the Internet. In addition to Nielsen’s economic, usability, and empowerment divides, this group sees the following concerns.

• Social mobility. Lack of computer education works to the disadvantage of children with lower socioeconomic status.
• Democracy. Greater use of the Internet can lead to healthier democracies especially in participation in elections.
• Economic growth. Greater use of the Internet in developing countries could provide a shortcut to economic advancement. Using the latest technology could give companies in these countries a competitive advantage.

The focus on the continuing digital divide has led the European Union to create an initiative known as The European 2020 Strategy. Five major areas are being targeted: a) research and development, b) climate/energy, c) education, d) social inclusion, and e) poverty reduction.

Using Gaming to Bridge the Digital Divide

Paul Kim, the Associate Dean and Chief Technology Officer of the Stanford Graduate School of Education, designed a project to address the digital divide for children in developing countries. In their project the researchers wanted to learn if children can adopt and teach themselves mobile learning technology, without help from teachers or other adults, and the processes and factors involved in this phenomenon. The researchers developed a mobile device called TeacherMate, which contained a game designed to help children learn math. The unique part of this research was that the researchers interacted directly with the children. They did not channel the mobile devices through the teachers or the schools. There was another important factor to consider. In order to understand the context of the children’s educational environment, the researchers began the project by working with parents and local nonprofits six months before their visit. While the results of this research are too detailed to go into here, it can be said that the researchers found that children can, indeed, adopt and teach themselves mobile learning technologies.

What makes this research so interesting when thinking about the digital divide is that the researchers found that, in order to be effective, they had to customize their technology and tailor their implementation to the specific group they were trying to reach. One of their conclusions stated the following: