To: CLS Participants (Web only; e-mail alert)

From: Nicholas Johnson

Re: CLS/Reading Assignments for April 5, 2000

Note: The following material, as always, will be the subject of a brief quiz. Page numbers are indicated to give a rough sense of length of material and are taken from my printed copies.

Having spent last week exploring the options for the rich to become richer still (the opportunities offered by e-commerce and the "billion dollar bonanzas") we now owe the poor at least a nod of recognition and relief.

As explained in the e-mail of this date, this is a "default reading assignment." We may either (a) spend a substantial amount of the evening discussing student papers, or (b) add something to this reading assignment before Wednesday evening, but what now follows is all that will be covered on the quiz. As you'll see it's mostly journalism or equivalent (rather than "law"), and therefore a relatively quick read.

But your goal, and assignment, is to come to class Wednesday evening having thought through the issues and your own proposal/s for remedying the inequality -- if you believe (a) inequality exists, and (b) requires a remedy.

Before we start looking at America's "information rich" and "information poor," lets put the circumstances of our own people into a world context. James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, summarized some of those facts for us in a March 14, 2000, speech to the National Press Club, "Challenges Facing the Bank in the 21st Century." Skip Jack Cushman's introduction (over 2 pages on my print out) and start at "MR. WOLFENSOHN: Well, thank you . . .." You may be inspired to read it all, but the only assigned portion is (on my copy) his first four pages (up to the paragraph that begins, "The challenge we at the Bank are taking is to try and work with governments, . . ..") The point of this material is (1) to force us to realize that when we blithely talk about how "now everyone in the world can get access to all the knowledge on planet Earth with the touch of a button" there are a few billion folks to whom our generalization does not apply. And (2) to start us thinking about whether the "multi-dimensional approach" of which Wolfensohn speaks is going to be equally essential in the U.S. as well.

(It's not assigned, but if you'd like even more on the topic of his speech, a summary of the Bank's book-length report, "Voices of the Poor," is available as a March 14, 2000, news release from the Bank.)

Next look at the Executive Summary from The Children's Partnership report, "Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Americans," March 2000, which effectively makes the point that the digital divide involves far more than the absence of computers and modems. It's four pages (pp. 8-11) in the "pdf" version. (The printout of the entire report in pdf is 54 pages.) There is no direct link. For the HTML version go to The Children's Partnership site, click on "Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Americans: The Digital Divide’s New Frontier," and, once there, on "Executive Summary."

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has pulled together far more data and charts on the subject than almost anyone would find use for, in its latest in a series of reports titled, "Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide/A Report on the Telecommunications and Information Technology Gap in America." The entire report, in pdf, prints out at 108 pages. All that's assigned for now is the "Executive Summary." That's a link to the html version. It's only a little over a full page in pdf (pp. xv-xvi).

(It's not assigned, but the NTIA has a Web page of additional links and references entitled "Americans in the Information Age Falling Through the Net" which you might want to look at.)

A two-page-with-box summary of the Clinton Administration's proposals at a February 2, 2000, gathering titled "From Digital Divide to Digital Opportunity" is available. (The next document from the main page, "The Clinton-Gore Agenda for Creating Digital Opportunity," which is not assigned, goes into a little more detail about those proposals.) There's a two-page reference to some of the data from the NTIA "Falling Through the Net" report ("The Importance of Bridging the Digital Divide").

And of course you'll want to review 47 U.S.C. Sec. 254(h) from the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that provides for subsidized "e-rates" for schools -- especially if you think that constitutes a major potential solution.

Finally, read the January 15, 2000, piece by Steve Cisler in the San Jose Mercury News, "Subtract the Digital Divide," for the viewpoint of someone who says that, whatever it is we need to work on we shouldn't be calling it a "digital divide."