From the web page http://www.benton.org/Library/Low-Income

New Benton publication: Losing Ground Bit by Bit: Low-Income
Communities in the Digital Age examines the barriers (beyond
just income) that are slowing the spread of new technology in
low-income communities.


About Benton's Policy & Practice Work

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Infrastructure through research and policy analysis, outreach to
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Last updated: 27 July 1998 jss



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Contents


Intro
The Gap
Barriers
What's Needed
What's Working
Resources  |  | Losing Ground Bit by Bit
Low-Income Communities in the Information Age

When Tony Riddle, executive director of Manhattan Neighborhood
Network, wants to emphasize the importance of information to
social welfare, he tells the story of "Juneteenth."

June 19 commemorates the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas first
learned that Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation
Proclamation. Lincoln actually signed the proclamation much
earlier in 1863. But the Texas slaves, deprived of this
information, had to wait two and a half more years before
finally achieving freedom.

Today, it's hard to imagine anybody being denied information so
vital to his or her well-being for so long. Yet in ways more
subtle but nevertheless insidious, some people lack access to
the emerging information resources of the digital age. By 1998,
we may assume that every American has at least heard of, if not
used, the global computer network called the Internet. But while
kids in wealthier households may now take access to technology
at home, at school, or at the local library for granted, the
lack of access to up-to-date computers in low-income communities
and to affordable Internet service in rural areas leaves many
people cut off from good jobs and the chance to participate in
the affairs of the broader society.

Indeed, even as digital technologies are bringing an exciting
array of new opportunities to many Americans, they actually are
aggravating the poverty and isolation that plague some rural
areas and inner cities. Advances in telecommunications are
speeding the exodus of good jobs from urban areas to the
suburbs, leaving inner cities and rural areas more isolated than
ever from the kinds of jobs, educational opportunities, quality
health-care services, and technological tools that they need to
be able to contribute to the overall economy.

This technology gap has ominous implications not just for the
low-income communities that are directly affected, but for the
entire society. "We are witnessing the fracturing of the
democratic institutions that hold us together," warns Armando
Valdez, chair of the California Telecommunications Policy Forum,
a group of leaders from ethnic communities who examine the
impact of telecommunications policies. "The possibility of an
information underclass is growing."

This need not be the shape of our future, however. With some
effort, information technologies could help us address problems
of chronic poverty. While they clearly are no substitute for
other anti-poverty efforts, they could be used to facilitate the
kind of networking and exchange of information vital to
community building. They could enable social service agencies to
operate much more efficiently and reach a broader public. They
could empower individuals and groups who have been excluded from
public discourse by allowing them to reach new and wider
audiences. New technologies could provide data that communities
can use to understand and attack problems relating to housing,
crime, health, and other concerns.

This report, the latest in Benton's "What's Going On" series
exploring public interest issues in the Information Age,
examines the technology gap in low-income communities, assesses
what barriers are slowing the spread of new technologies to the
underserved, and describes some of the most promising efforts to
produce a more equitable distribution. It reflects our
conviction that the design of the communications system through
which we will talk to one another, learn from one another, and
participate in political and economic life together is too
important to be left to the free market alone. Public interest
advocates including representatives of the poor must play an
active role in both the policy arena and the marketplace to
ensure that the emerging networks meet the basic economic,
social, political, and cultural needs of everyone, regardless of
their ability to pay or where they live.

We all have a stake in achieving this inclusive future. As B.
Keith Fulton, director for technology programs and policy for
the National Urban League, states, society is an organism and
communications networks are its nervous system. Just as the
whole body suffers if some parts of it aren't able to
communicate with the rest by nerves, society suffers if some
individuals and communities are digitally disconnected. "There
is value," Fulton argues, "in every community in the barrio and
the ghetto, in Appalachia, in Chinatown, in uptown and downtown,
and eastside and westside."

The report begins by discussing what we currently know about the
extent of the technology gap and its implications. In Part II,
we examine barriers that complicate efforts to close the gap.
Part III describes policy issues that affect access to new
communications technologies. In Part IV, we examine a wide range
of community-based efforts that we believe illustrate approaches
that offer the best hope of bringing about a more equitable
distribution of the benefits of the digital age. Finally, Part V
lists some additional resources for those interested in pursuing
these issues further.

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                One: Defining the Technology Gap


In an October 8, 1996, article describing one of California's
technology corridors, the Wall Street Journal captured some of
the enthusiasm many people feel for the revolution arising from
the marriage of computers and communications networks. "Silicon
Valley," it said, "is in the midst of an epic boom, opulent even
for this glittering edge of America."

But such riches haven't reached many low-income communities even
ones like East Palo Alto, which is right in the middle of
Silicon Valley's technological abundance. "Anywhere else in
Silicon Valley, your parents use computers, there is a shop down
the street to sell you a computer, another to fix your computer,
another to give you computer classes, (and) there are Kinko's
everywhere," notes Bart Decrem, director of a California youth
technology initiative called Plugged In. "In East Palo Alto,
there's none of that."

The contrast between affluent and low-income communities may be
particularly sharp in places like Silicon Valley, but it exists
almost everywhere. The simple fact is that poor communities are
entering the Information Age far behind their wealthier
neighbors.

"While [middle-class communities] are rapidly approaching the
'next cycle,' the technology of the previous cycle has already
bypassed the inner city," says Richard Krieg, executive director
of the Institute for Metropolitan Affairs, a public interest
organization in Chicago committed to seeking practical answers
to problems involving education, health care, and crime. Krieg
notes that while families in affluent areas are rapidly
acquiring home computers, people in many low-income
neighborhoods have little exposure even to earlier generation
tools such as laser scanners at supermarkets and bank automatic
tellers. "Despite limited empirical study of technology
diffusion..., it is clear that computerization,
telecommunications, and mass media applications are dramatically
underrepresented in distressed urban areas."

As Krieg suggests, the technology gap is not simply a reflection
of the choices made by individual households. The deeper problem
is that many poor neighborhoods lack the infrastructure
available in affluent areas. Groups such as the United Church of
Christ that have studied patterns of telecommunications
investment have found that, all too often, telephone and cable
companies have moved quickly to wire wealthier suburbs with
advanced systems, while poor, inner-city neighborhoods aren't
upgraded. While public attention is often focused on whether
individuals can get a service, the equally important problem is
that lack of adequate telecommunications facilities makes an
area less attractive for businesses. This can feed a spiral
where the lack of investment at the community level leads to
fewer economic opportunities for people who live there. As a
result, the poverty in the neighborhood makes it a less inviting
target for investment, further aggravating the problem.

The same neighborhoods that lack infrastructure are comprised of
households that are far less likely to have the tools of the
Information Age. In an August 1996 survey of southern
Californians, the Los Angeles Times found that just 22 percent
of households earning less than $25,000 had access to computers,
compared to 69 percent of those with incomes over $50,000. "Poor
neighborhoods of the region are just totally cut off from the
potential benefits of an economy that integrates such vast
scientific skill," says Mike Davis, a Los Angeles historian and
teacher of urban studies at the Southern California Institute of
Architecture.

More recently, according to a Computer Intelligence 1998
Consumer Technology Survey, 80 percent of families making more
than $100,000 have computers. By contrast, of those families
making less than $30,000 a year, only 25 percent have computers.
A 1998 study led by David Birdsell of Baruch College found
significant disparities in the area of education: of people with
an undergraduate degree or higher, 53 percent use the Web while
only 19 percent of people with a high school education or less
are Web users.

While demographic trends are changing quickly, there is some
evidence that race and income may interact in troubling ways. A
1998 Vanderbilt University study based on Nielsen data from late
1996 and early 1997 indicates that racial inequities in computer
ownership and Internet access jump significantly when household
incomes drop below $40,000. In such cases, African Americans
were less than half as likely as whites to own a home computer
and about 60 percent as likely to have Internet access.

Similar trends appear in telephone service, a much older
technology that many poor Americans still don't have. While all
but 6 percent of U.S. households have telephones, 43.5 percent
of families who depend entirely on public assistance and 50
percent of female-headed households living at or below the
poverty line lack even this basic technology. And African
Americans and Latinos lag about 10 percentage points behind
their white counterparts in access to telephones even when
income is held constant.

Worrisome Trends

There is no easy way to measure the impact of the current
inequitable distribution of information technologies, but it
clearly is becoming an increasingly important contributor to
inequality in America. The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA)
described the effect as "the concentration of poverty and the
deconcentration of opportunity."

Email, video conferencing, fax machines, and computer networks
are making it easier for jobs to migrate from city centers to
suburbs and beyond, the OTA explained in a 1995 report. These
technologies are enabling industries that once had to be close
to customers and related businesses to operate at greater
distances. Similarly, they are allowing distributors and
financial institutions like banks and insurance companies to
consolidate operations and locate "back room" facilities farther
from their customers, eliminating many downtown jobs.

At the same time, new technologies have led to sweeping changes
in manufacturing processes, making old factories in urban
centers obsolete. The OTA estimated that the 28 largest counties
in the Northeast and Midwest lost one million jobs in the 1980s.
The city of Chicago alone has more than 2,000 unused
manufacturing sites, according to Krieg.

As employers take advantage of technological advances to
relocate to suburbs, the labor market in many cities has become
fractured. Many highly skilled managerial and professional jobs
remain downtown because they require a great deal of
face-to-face contact and networking. But increasingly, the only
work for unskilled people consists of low-paying, service sector
jobs. Such jobs offer little hope of advancement, and
intermediate jobs that would help less skilled workers climb
career ladders are hard to find.

"We are witnessing the wholesale disappearance of work
accessible to the urban poor," concludes Milton J. Little, Jr.,
executive vice president and chief operating officer of the
National Urban League. His view was confirmed in 1996 by Harvard
sociologist William Julius Wilson in When Work Disappears: The
World of the New Urban Poor.

But the cities' loss has not been the rural areas' gain.
"Without intervention, unemployment, poverty, and out-migration
will likely increase, exacerbating the structural problems
typical of rural areas," the OTA warned in an earlier report,
Rural America at the Crossroads: Networking for the Future.
"Unlike routine manufacturing industries that migrated to rural
areas in search of lower production costs, today's
high-technology industries are attracted by a highly skilled
workforce and communications networks to other economic markets
and information centers. These are precisely what rural areas
lack."

"Poor, rural communities are already isolated," observes Amy
Borgstrom, executive director of ACENet, an organization
dedicated to using networking technologies to open new markets
for citizens in Appalachian Ohio. "There is low access to
infrastructures." Borgstrom argues that information technologies
could enable isolated communities rural and inner-city to
compete economically with other regions. "But without
infrastructure, training, and access, information technology and
these opportunities will pass these communities by," she says.

Who Suffers?

The technology gap is taking a toll on individuals, communities,
and society at large.

The cost to individuals is most obvious. By the year 2000, 60
percent of jobs will require skills with technology, according
to Larry Irving, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for
Communications and Information. Moreover, notes the Office of
Management and Budget, 75 percent of all transactions between
individuals and the government including such services as
delivery of food stamps, Social Security benefits, and Medicaid
information will take place electronically. People without
technology skills or access to electronic communications will be
at a considerable disadvantage.

This is already clear in today's job market. The gap between
wages for skilled and unskilled workers has been widening for
some years as employers increasingly compete for well-trained
workers who can use new technologies. Between 1979 and 1995, for
instance, real wages dropped 23 percent for people with less
than a high school education and 12 percent for those with only
high school diplomas, while wages rose 4 percent for college
graduates and 12 percent for people with advanced degrees,
according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think
tank. Economists David Autor and Lawrence Katz of Harvard and
Alan Krueger of Princeton found in a March 1997 study that the
spread of computer technology may explain as much as half of the
increase in relative demand for more skilled workers.

Source: "Web Users are Looking More like Americans,"
Harris Survey Unit of Baruch College and Louis Harris
Associates, April 1998.

More recently, The Washington Post reported that students with
limited or no access to computers are falling behind in skills
that educators and parents worry will cost them later. These
students are less exposed to a diverse range of facts and ideas
than their computer-owning classmates, and they are increasingly
at a disadvantage when it comes to skills that will be needed in
college and in the job market.

People with relatively poor access to computers suffer
disadvantages that stretch beyond the labor market. Unless there
is intervention, "fewer and fewer Americans will be able to
fully participate in our nation's economic, social, civic, and
government life," the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) says on its website. HUD has established a
"Neighborhood Networks" initiative to assist disadvantaged
Americans living in HUD-insured or -assisted housing gain access
to information technologies.

"The rich are going to be getting richer in terms of
information," says James Katz, a researcher at Bellcore and
co-author of a survey on Internet usage. "The information poor
will become more impoverished because government bodies,
community organizations, and corporations are displacing
resources from their ordinary channels of communication onto the
Internet.... To the extent any demographic group becomes
excluded from and underrepresented on the Internet, it will also
be excluded from the economic fruits that such participation
promises."

The technology gap may also slow efforts by low-income
communities to help themselves. A growing number of civic
activists believe that modern communications networks are an
important tool for fostering civic engagement. According to
Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, civic engagement
whether in PTAs, bowling leagues, or any of the associations
people form to address specific issues can facilitate
coordination and communication, foster the emergence of leaders
who can help generate collective action, and reduce incentives
for people to act solely in their own self-interest. Research in
fields as varied as education, urban poverty, unemployment,
crime, drug abuse, health, and economic development recognizes
that the resulting "social capital" can enable communities to
deal more successfully with social problems. Communities without
access to communications networks may find it more difficult to
sustain the civic engagement that can lead to these improved
outcomes.

Source: Computer Intelligence,
 "1998 Consumer Technology Index"

Communications technologies may be especially important to
neighborhood-based organizations, many of which struggle in
relative isolation to deal with such daunting problems as
abandoned housing, poor street maintenance, crime, substandard
health care and education, and environmental threats. Yet the
Urban University and Neighborhood Network (UUNN), a coalition of
universities and community organizations in Ohio, found in a
recent survey that most such organizations have neither Internet
access, nor believe that they could afford it. According to the
UUNN, organizations without access may be undermining their own
prospects for survival because the Internet in at least some
cases is not only the most efficient resource for information,
but also for updates on pending legislation and funding
opportunities.

"Those who lack access to the Internet...will lose out in an
increasingly competitive environment," the UUNN concluded.
"Because so many neighborhood-based organizations are small,
geographically isolated, and woefully underfunded, their members
don't have efficient access to the information needed to
understand all aspects of their neighborhood problems and the
paths toward solutions."

This lack of infrastructure strikes some as particularly
worrisome because it comes at a time the federal government is
forcing individuals and communities to become more
self-sufficient. Cuts in spending on social programs and the
new, strict work requirements imposed on welfare recipients make
it more necessary than ever that low-income people take
responsibility for their own well-being, but their task is
greatly complicated by the lack of communications tools and
other networking opportunities that people in affluent areas
take for granted. "It's as if we're asking them to pull
themselves up by their boot straps, and we are taking away their
boots," says Joey Rodger, president of the Urban Libraries
Council.

Katherine Willis, of the Alliance for Community Technology at
the University of Michigan, believes that exclusion of certain
groups from these communications tools could also have profound
implications for our society's ability to function as a
democracy. "When democracy functions well, individual
perspectives balance each other out," she notes. "But if I can
lobby my congressman with email with a click of a button, and
those on the other side of an issue don't have such easy access,
laws will be made that don't reflect the full population's
beliefs."

Can Schools and Libraries Help the Poor Catch Up?

Traditionally, we have looked to schools and libraries to help
eliminate disparities in access to information resources.
Unfortunately, through no fault of their own, many of these
institutions mirror the technology gap rather than mitigate it.

Despite considerable progress, schools in low-income communities
have fewer computers and modems than schools serving wealthier
districts. According to Computers and Classrooms: The Status of
Technology in U.S. Schools, a study by the Educational Testing
Service (ETS), minority and poor students had significantly less
access to computers in their classes than more affluent
children. Schools with minority enrollment greater than 90
percent had a student-to-computer ratio of 17 to 1, compared to
the national average of 10 to 1. For computers with advanced
graphics and interactive video capabilities, the discrepancies
were even bigger. While 62 percent of schools in high-income
areas had Internet access in 1995, just 31 percent of schools
serving low-income populations had access, according to the
Department of Education's 1996 report, Getting America's
Students Ready for the Twenty-First Century. ETS's later study
found that the number of schools with Internet access rose
markedly in 1996, but the gap remained: 75 percent of schools in
high-income areas and just 55 percent in low-income areas had
Internet access. "The kids with the most needs are getting the
least access," an ETS researcher told the Washington Post.

Insufficient hardware or network connections aren't the only and
may not even be the biggest problems for schools in poorer
communities. Because of inadequate teacher training, these
schools may not be using the computers they have in ways that
have the greatest long-term benefits for students. All too
often, they use computers for rote learning or drill exercises.
In wealthy schools, on the other hand, where there generally is
more money for curriculum development and teacher training,
computers tend to be used more for complex learning activities,
analysis, and writing skills that command higher wages in
today's economy.

As Delia Neuman at Maryland College of Information Services put
it in a 1990 study that remains one of the few academic analyses
of the issue, "economically disadvantaged students, who often
use the computer for remediation and basic skills, learn to do
what the computer tells them, while more affluent
students...learn to tell the computer what to do." (The Benton
Foundation explores the educational role of computer networking
in its report, The Learning Connection: Schools in the
Information Age.)

Libraries, meanwhile, are working to reduce inequality in access
to new technologies, but they lack resources to do the whole
job. According to Richard Kreig, public libraries in the city of
Chicago had just one computer for every 20,000 residents they
served in 1995, while libraries in the city's suburbs had one
for every 13,000 residents. Krieg asserts that the discrepancy
would be even greater if figures were available to compare the
number of computers available in libraries in low-income
sections of Chicago to those at suburban libraries.

Internet access is also spread unevenly among libraries, with
the greatest disparity between libraries in urban/suburban and
rural areas. While 72.3 percent of all public libraries had some
type of Internet connection in the spring of 1997, library
systems serving populations of 25,000 and above had a better
than 90 percent connectivity rate, according to The 1997
National Survey of U.S. Public Libraries and the Internet. Those
serving populations of 5,000 or less had a connectivity rate of
around 56 percent. Even among libraries that are connected,
Internet access for patrons varies widely.

There is a direct link between the wealth of a library's
neighborhood and the ability of that library to serve its
neighborhood information needs, argues the Urban Libraries
Council's Joey Rodger. "Ninety percent of library funding is
local," she says. "Where there are many, many poor people, the
local library has less capacity to serve them."

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                Two: Barriers to Closing the Gap


Lack of resources in low-income communities can't explain the
technology gap alone, although that clearly is an important
factor. The low priority that society puts on equal access to
telecommunications hardware, combined with skepticism among the
poor about the benefits technology might bring, also hinder
deployment of new information infrastructure in impoverished
neighborhoods. Any plan to achieve a more equitable distribution
must address these attitudinal barriers in addition to
surmounting the considerable financial obstacles.

Societal Priorities

Many Americans view advanced telecommunications tools as
technological "gadgets" and don't perceive an overriding public
need to ensure their equitable distribution. They consider the
new technologies part of what Princeton University Professor
Jennifer L. Hochschild calls the "economic domain" rather than
the "socializing domain." According to Hochschild's research,
Americans expect equality in the socializing domain, which
includes goods like education, health care, and basic political
rights, but we tolerate much wider differentiation in the
economic domain.

Because many people consider information technologies part of
the economic realm, proposals to use public funds to establish
community access centers often encounter resistance. "Access is
still in a consumer mentality," says Peter Miller, director of
the Community Technology Centers' Network, a coalition of over
200 programs and agencies that provide training and computer
time to people who typically lack access. "It's compared to
swimming pools or tennis courts. The whole idea that a community
access center is a place where people get empowered no one's
there yet."

In fact, information technologies increasingly are taking on
characteristics of goods in the socializing realm. "Email is not
like a commodity or a gadget, where we've grown to expect
socio-economic stratification," noted Tora Bikson, the co-author
of RAND's Universal Access To E-mail, in a December 1995
interview. "Rather, it's much more a means for accessing
information, communicating, and exchanging ideas (and
participating in) voluntary associations, civic organizations,
(and) political activity...If people are cut off from the means
to participate in these kinds of activities, it really has a
negative impact on society as a whole."

Source: "Telephone penetration by state," FCC Common Carrier
Bureau, January 1998;
and "Ensuring Telephone Access in the Digital Age," Center for
Media Education, February 1998.

Computer networking is so new that its full social role is still
being defined. But studies of families who can't afford basic
telephone service offer some indication of the importance of
telecommunications in people's lives. Jorge Reina Schement, a
communications scholar at Penn State University, cites research
that low-income families without telephone service face barriers
to seeking public assistance, and are dangerously isolated in
cases of emergency. In 1987, a Montana court decided that lack
of a phone was a real barrier to gaining employment. The court
based its decision partly on a study showing that individuals
without phones have a harder time scheduling job interviews or
communicating with prospective employers, noted Ellis Jacobs,
director of litigation for the Legal Aid Society of Dayton,
Ohio.

Similarly, a study conducted by the National Consumer Law Center
for the Maine Public Utilities Commission showed that 80 percent
of households whose electric service had been cut off had no
telephones and that people without a phone were underrepresented
in payment plans. This reflects, at least in part, the fact that
families who lack phone service have trouble contacting
utilities and social service agencies to seek benefits for which
they are qualified.

Ambivalence about Technology

Many low-income people themselves are skeptical about the value
of digital technologies. That isn't surprising, since poor
people have little exposure to the new technologies and their
experience with previous technologies may not have been as
positive as middle-class policymakers might assume.

"Do people feel that computers are going to be crucial for their
future?" asks Jonathan Lange, a community organizer for
Baltimore United in Leadership Development (BUILD). "No. People
don't have computers. They don't have them in their homes. They
don't have them at school. They don't even have phones."

In research commissioned by the Markle Foundation in 1996,
Bellcore Labs found that "a disproportionate number of African
American and Hispanic respondents reported not being aware of
the Internet." Some 58 percent of those who weren't aware had
household incomes below $25,000. Those figures may understate
the problem. "Despite massive amounts of publicity, few people
know what the World Wide Web is, how it can be accessed, and
what kinds of information can be obtained by its use," Theresa
E. Anderson and Alan Melchior wrote in Assessing
Telecommunications Technology as a Tool for Urban Community
Building.

Carol Edwards, director of programs at the National Education
Association's National Foundation for the Improvement of
Education, blames the technology gap partly on the way computer
technology is sold. Cars, furniture, housing, and other
big-ticket items often come with financing options, but
computers, which are marketed mainly to the middle class, often
must be bought all at once. "Look at where you buy computers: in
upper-class malls or through mail order," Edwards says. "People
in poor communities don't have easy access to these
distributors." Nor do many poor people have checking accounts or
credit cards, which often are required to get an Internet
account, she adds.

While schools and libraries often provide access, training, and
support for many who otherwise would not have any entry point to
the Internet, these institutions face an uphill struggle to
overcome the skepticism of many people in low-income areas.
"Poor people maybe because of illiteracy, maybe because part of
being poor means being unconnected to public institutions may
not come to libraries for access," says the Urban Libraries
Council's Joey Rodger.

But Bruce Lincoln, manager of community outreach and development
at the Institute for Learning Technologies, interprets that
ambivalence in another way. "It's understandable that folks are
skeptical, but when the principal, the parents, the students,
and the teachers are involved in the design and decisionmaking,
they quickly overcome their initial ambivalance."

The troubles encountered by schools and libraries illustrate an
important point about the dissemination of computer technology.
As the Bellcore survey demonstrated, many people over half of
those surveyed learned about the Internet not through these
institutions, but rather at work or through family or friends.
Only one in five was introduced to the technology at a
university or through some other formal course. Similarly, a
1996 national public opinion survey of library users published
by the Benton Foundation in Buildings, Books, and Bytes found
that a strong plurality would go to "somebody they know" rather
than a librarian for help with technology.

This suggests that narrowing the technology gap will be more
difficult than simply introducing computers or offering classes.
Top-down efforts may prove to be frustratingly slow. Creative
ways will have to be found to make computer networking more a
part of the social lives of people in low-income neighborhoods.

Lack of Political Clout

Because relatively few people in low-income communities see much
value in new technologies, their neighborhoods are less vocal in
demanding services from communications providers. Indeed, many
lack the basic information needed to exercise political
leverage.

Ethel Long-Scott, director of the Women's Economic Agenda
Project (WEAP) in Oakland, California, believes that without
strong activism, poor communities will be saddled with regional
communications plans that don't serve their best interest. WEAP
has launched a "women and family center" to provide education
and training in the computer and communications technology, to
foster development of women- and minority-owned small
businesses, and to involve Oakland's grassroots leadership in a
program of community revitalization.

In Oakland, there are "scattered efforts" to apply technology,
but the community groups sponsoring these efforts aren't strong
enough to sustain a comprehensive effort, Long-Scott says.
Wealthy areas like Sunnyvale and Cupertino in California are
more likely able to make long-term technology plans, while
decisionmaking bodies in poor communities continue to be
"overwhelmed," she suggests.

In the absence of strong grassroots pressure, telecommunications
providers appear unlikely to deploy new technologies to
low-income communities voluntarily anytime soon. GTE failed to
replace party lines with private lines in rural Hawaii until
1991, when subscriber complaints finally led to a court order
requiring the move. More recently, Bell Atlantic, which told New
Jersey residents in 1992 that it would connect every home and
business with fiber optic cable, so far has only wired
corporations and large suburban business areas. The company has
announced plans to connect suburban neighborhoods on schedule,
but it has not released plans to connect the poor areas of the
state's largest cities, including the state's empowerment zones.

Bell Atlantic says it connected the regions with the most demand
first and that the whole state will be connected by 2010. But
people concerned about the wellbeing of low-income communities
aren't satisfied. Concerned that the empowerment zones won't be
able to attract needed investment and businesses without new
communications technologies, New Jersey's rate payer advocate
filed a complaint with the state's board of public utilities.
"Bell Atlantic New Jersey has not only inequitably deployed
broadband in the past, singling out suburban areas for
preferential treatment, but it apparently plans to continue that
practice in the future," the advocate, Blossum A. Peretz, told
the New York Times. In response to these and other assertions,
Bell Atlantic has moved aggressively to invest in
community-based organizations serving low-income neighborhoods.

To be sure, telecommunications providers face difficult
decisions as they build communications networks for the new
century. The costs of building capacity that exceeds the reach
of a region are considerable. In 1994 and 1995, North Carolina's
telephone companies partnered with the state and built the North
Carolina Information Highway (NCIH), an advanced
telecommunications infrastructure for voice, data, and video
transmission. The WEFA Group, an economic consulting firm,
estimates that the project will cost $450 million by the end of
1999, and the state auditor's office has estimated that the
project will cost $1 billion over the next nine years. It costs
as much as $100,000 to equip each new NCIH site, and users face
charges of about $3,000 a month, plus $23 an hour for video
usage (after the first 50 hours, which the state subsidizes) and
$483 per month for data usage. Most prospective customers can
find lower-tech, cheaper alternatives a strategy encouraged by
the fact that users of the system must acquire extra hardware to
connect to the Internet. With fewer government and private
subscribers using the NCIH than originally expected, projected
price reductions based on volume could fail to materialize.

As such examples demonstrate, policymakers and advocates face
tough choices as they seek to ensure creation of an affordable
communications network for the future that also serves
democratic ideals.

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              Three: What's Needed: The Policy Arena


Government policies will go a long way toward determining
whether new information technologies widen or narrow social
divisions. To ensure that the digital future brings opportunity
for everybody, regardless of income or geography, public
interest advocates must play an active role in the continuing
debate over telecommunications policy.

Universal Service

A key issue will be whether society's traditional commitment to
universal access to telecommunications keeps pace with changing
technology. Already, advocates have scored some significant
gains on this front. For one thing, the Telecommunications Act
of 1996 strengthened two programs designed to keep basic
telephone service affordable for low-income families: Lifeline,
which reduced monthly charges for an estimated 4.4 million
customers through 1997, and Link-Up America, which reduces
initial connection charges. Under the new law and regulations
that took effect in January 1998, consumers in all states will
be eligible for Lifeline and Link-Up assistance. Each Lifeline
consumer will receive $5.25 per month in federal support. In
addition, for every dollar a state offers in universal service
support, the federal government will kick in an extra 50 cents,
up to a maximum of $1.75. Under this formula, a low-income
consumer's bill could be reduced by $10.50 per month if the
state contributes $3.50. The new law also established that
qualifying customers can continue receiving basic telephone
service even if they are unable to pay their long-distance
charges.

The debate over universal service is far from over. The Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) must periodically review what
communications services should be covered by universal service
policies. At the same time, states are free to establish their
own definitions that go beyond federal conventions. Although the
definition currently is drawn rather tightly, public interest
advocates foresee a day when some services that currently aren't
eligible for universal service support will be recognized as
essential. For instance, Maxine Rockoff, a founder of the
Information Technology Initiative at United Neighborhood Houses
of New York, argues that our definition of universal service
should be expanded to include at least three new components:
access to a computer with a World Wide Web browser, a personal
Internet email address, and the capability to make one's own
information available via the Web.

At the moment, public officials haven't been willing to go as
far as Rockoff recommends. Even the states that have established
the most expansive definitions have not required discounted
rates for much beyond basic telephone service; they simply have
defined basic services to include touch-tone dialing, access to
long-distance carriers, and 911 services. Wisconsin has
concluded that advanced services should be accessible in some
form, though it doesn't require that they be provided to every
home or be subsidized as substantially as basic services.
California lawmakers recognize community organizations as
eligible for universal service support, while Louisiana moved to
include community networks as eligible for universal service
discounts.

The issue is a difficult one for policymakers, who must strike a
balance between competing interests when establishing universal
service policies, notes Thomas W. Bonnet in Telewars in the
States: Telecommunications Issues in a New Era of Competition.
On the one hand, they do not want to let the market establish
technologically wealthy and technologically disadvantaged
classes. But they also do not want to require rate payers to
subsidize new technologies for which there is no demand. As
Bradley Stillman, then the legislative counsel for the Consumer
Federation of America, told the Wall Street Journal in 1994: "I
don't want to be forced to pay for the interactive video games
or movies-on-demand of my neighbor down the street."

But at what point does a technology become important, as Montana
Public Service Commission member Bob Rowe puts it, "to a
household's ability to be part of the social and economic
community"? Federal and state policymakers will need advice on
this issue for years to come, and public-interest advocates will
have a vital role to play in the continuing discussion.

Perhaps the most important addition to the government's
universal service arsenal is a new provision, also launched by
the 1996 telecommunications law, that primary and secondary
schools and libraries can receive basic and advanced
telecommunications services at discounts ranging from 20 percent
to 90 percent below commercially available rates. The most
disadvantaged schools and libraries, as well as those in rural
areas, would receive the highest discounts. The discounts, also
known as the "e-rate," which could total as much as $2.25
billion per year and cover basic as well as advanced
telecommunications services, will be financed with revenues from
long-distance telephone charges.

Advocates like the National Urban League argue that the benefits
of universal service should be broadened to include educational
and developmental nonprofit organizations. These organizations,
says the League, "are a vital part of the second-chance
opportunity structure of these United States. Anything less than
the full participation of community-based organizations in the
resource pools of the Information Age is a disgrace." The
League's B. Keith Fulton concludes that "the most competitive
and forward-looking states will include all competent service
organizations as part of their formula for sustaining programs
and maximizing the state's workforce development initiatives."

Federal Programs

In the meantime, advocates should be ready to advise a number of
federal agencies that will help shape the telecommunications
future. The 1996 law established a Telecommunications
Development Fund (TDF) to make loans to small businesses to
promote competition in telecommunications and to stimulate new
technology development. The fund, which will operate as a
nonprofit corporation and will be capitalized with interest
earned on money raised in spectrum auctions, can be used "to
support universal service and promote delivery of
telecommunications services to underserved rural and urban
areas." As of March 1998, the TDF has $22 million to provide
assistance and financing to small communications businesses.

The federal government also identified the National Educational
Technology Funding Corporation as an organization that could
help states leverage funds for educational technology. Deena
Stoner, executive director at the Council for Educational
Development and Research, predicts that the corporation will
help states to finance improvements in school infrastructure so
that school buildings can support technology. " Even if you
could afford a computer for every four students, what about the
infrastructure issues? You can't have computers without enough
electric plugs or security systems, or with leaky roofs." The
corporation will depend on congressional appropriations for its
funding.

These new agencies join others that already have been
encouraging more widespread access to the communications tools
of the digital age. Since 1994, the Telecommunications and
Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP), part of
the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and
Information Administration, has awarded 332 grants totaling more
than $100 million for projects aimed at helping nonprofit
hospitals, tribal and local governments, libraries, schools, and
community centers use information technologies. Matching funds
have raised the total amount generated to more than $250
million. By design, every TIIAP site serves as a laboratory on
how to use new technologies to better serve the public. Some of
the primary tenets of TIIAP grants include creating
partnerships, supporting the end-user, providing access to the
underserved, and developing tools to evaluate the impact of
technology.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD),
meanwhile, devised the Neighborhood Networks Initiative to
provide training and access for residents of HUD-financed
properties. Neighborhood Networks supports the development of
community technology centers in public housing. Currently, there
are over 340 Neighborhood Networks centers open, with more than
1,060 planned. HUD also was concerned that the increasing
frequency of online government and commercial transactions would
leave citizens served by its programs severely disenfranchised
and ill-equipped to achieve self-reliance given a significant
projected decrease in funding for federal rental assistance over
the next five years. HUD provides some funds for Neighborhood
Networks sites, but it says these should be considered "gap
fillers."

State Regulatory Commissions

State regulatory commissions will be another important arena for
decisions affecting equal access to new technologies. Here, too,
public interest advocates have a major role to play.

The opportunities were illustrated by a case in Ohio, where the
Legal Aid Societies of Dayton and Cleveland helped win
concessions from Ameritech that led to establishment of a number
of community technology centers. Representing clients including
the American Association for Retired Persons, the Ohio
Department of Education, and the Greater Cleveland Welfare
Rights Association, the Legal Aid Societies accused Ameritech of
overcharging customers. A negotiated settlement ultimately
provided for establishment of 14 community computing centers in
seven Ohio cities and creation of a fund that finances reduced
telephone rates for low-income households and school technology
efforts.

Public interest advocates also won a significant victory from
the California Public Utilities Commission. In the late 1980s,
the commission found that Pacific Bell (PacBell) had been
signing up low-income and non-English-speaking customers for
services like call waiting and call forwarding without taking
adequate steps to obtain their consent. Typically in such
regulatory cases, companies are required to make restitution or
pay fines by providing credits to all their customers. But
public interest advocates argued that the company had victimized
a specific set of customers, not all telephone users, and that
restitution should be similarly targeted. The commission agreed,
and Pacific Bell was required to pay $16.5 million, plus another
$4.5 million in interest, into a Telecommunications Education
Trust Fund that financed research and education programs aimed
at minority and low-income communities.

Some of this money went to technology initiatives. Some went to
develop a public kiosk prototype, with a touch-sensitive screen
and instructions in Spanish, that could be used by recent
immigrants to learn about the U.S. telephone system. And seed
money was provided to launch the California Telecommunications
Policy Forum to educate leaders in the Latino communities about
communications policy issues that could affect their
constituencies.

More recently, as a condition of California regulators' approval
of PacBell's merger with SBC Communications Inc., they required
PacBell to refund to ratepayers the economic benefits of the
merger in the amount of $248 million over five years. The $248
million is to be distributed in the form of $213 million in
surcredits and $34 million to fund the "Community Partnership
Commitment," under which PacBell promises to fund over $50
million in consumer education efforts plus an additional $32
million for other activities over a 10-year period. Advocates
observe that the Community Partnership Commitment will provide
valuable contributions to underserved communities in California,
a more valuable economic benefit than small monthly rebates for
PacBell's customers.

The latest planned merger between SBC and Ameritech Corporation
will be reviewed by the Department of Justice and the Federal
Communications Commission, as well as the state regulatory
commissions in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Local public
interest groups should remain vigilant to ensure that the
proposed benefits of major telecommunications mergers reach the
communities that need these benefits most.

Other Anti-Poverty Efforts

Technology offers no magic wand that will eliminate poverty and
isolation in America. To be effective, efforts to achieve
equitable access to telecommunications must be part of a broader
strategy that addresses the underlying problems of inner cities
and disadvantaged rural areas. While such policies go far beyond
the scope of this report, three specific issues illustrate this
point.

School Equity. While schools in low-income communities have made
strides toward acquiring new technologies, these gains are
unlikely to have a lasting effect unless teachers are
comfortable with new technologies. Unfortunately, schools in
low-income communities have fewer resources than wealthy
communities for teacher training and technology support. This is
particularly worrisome since many children in low-income
communities are not exposed to new technology at home. Those who
are concerned about equality in the information age cannot
afford to ignore debates in state legislatures about school
funding for staff and training. Funding is only part of the
answer, though. Long-term volunteers are needed to help schools
and individual teachers learn how to use computers and the
Internet effectively.

Job Training. Success in the job market of the future will
require a high level of familiarity with technology. The
Information Technology Association of America estimated in early
1997 that one in ten technology jobs goes unfilled because of a
shortage of trained workers. Job training programs should focus
on developing clients' skills with computers and communications
tools. And such training should be closely linked to actual job
opportunities. Otherwise, it may do little more than breed
frustration. As numerous experts in the job training field have
found, there is a tremendous need for closer collaboration in
job training efforts between employers, educators, community
organizations, and given the rising expectation that welfare
recipients find jobs welfare agencies.

Transportation. Policymakers must consider the harmful effect
communications technology has had in facilitating the flight of
good jobs from central cities to the suburbs. Since only one out
of five suburban jobs is easily accessible by public
transportation, according to Hank Ditmar of the Surface
Transportation Policy Project, improvements in public
transportation, ride-sharing arrangements, and new shuttle
programs should be a high priority. Planners also should explore
whether more opportunities could be created for inner-city
residents to telecommute. But ultimately, the best solution may
be to find ways to nurture good jobs in the neighborhoods that
have been losing them.

Community-Based Initiatives

Efforts to encourage the spread of information technologies in
low-income communities stand little chance of achieving lasting
success unless they are firmly rooted in the communities' own
sense of their goals and needs. But simple as that observation
sounds, we haven't always heeded it. All too often, community
revitalization projects unintentionally have promoted the
"perception that only outside experts can provide real help,"
argue John P. Kretzman and John L. McKnight in Building
Communities from the Inside Out. This can be disastrous,
especially considering the ambivalence, or outright suspicion,
with which many residents of low-income neighborhoods view
technology.

Increasingly, however, technology activists stress the
importance of nurturing individuals and indigenous community
organizations that already provide help and support in the
community, rather than trying to impose technology from the
outside. If an effort is aimed at providing new Internet access
points in a certain community, they say, residents should have a
say in where the stations are set up. Low-income people should
decide for themselves how these tools can best serve their
interests.

"It is not just a question of access," explains Peter Miller at
the Community Technology Centers' Network, "but who controls the
content (and) how much control does the community have on the
electronic environment serving it."

A first step is to identify and work with recognized information
leaders in the communities. As part of a community networking
project in Austin, Texas, for example, a team of graduate
students from the University of Texas is engaged in social
mapping finding the key community members and organizations that
people use to find information. "We want to discover who are the
key community members," says project director Gary Chapman. "My
long-term goal is to have the information networks map to this
network."

Similarly, Joey Rodger at the Urban Libraries Council says
public libraries could "deputize" community leaders, training
them in communications technology so that they can spread the
word. "If libraries can reach out and create Ôbarefoot
librarians,' these people can present the services and their
significance to the community in the community's terms."

It isn't always obvious who community information leaders will
be. In one Chicago neighborhood, for instance, Richard Krieg and
his colleagues at the Institute for Metropolitan Affairs found
that many people relied on a pharmacist's assistant for health
information on topics ranging from child care to drugs. The
Institute's challenge, according to Krieg, is to determine how
to make information technologies available in ways that will
increase the capabilities of such individuals.

Community-based organizations are particularly well-positioned
to play a leadership role in spreading technology in low-income
communities, mainly because they already have strong local ties.
In New York, for instance, settlement houses provide a wide
range of services to community residents including pre-school
and after-school programs for children, college readiness
classes, adult education, GED preparation, job training, and
senior centers. All these services could be enhanced by the
thoughtful application of technology. As the settlement houses
have learned, once computers and network connections become
available in an environment where people are comfortable,
residents readily embrace it.

"The experience of settlement houses in New York City suggests
that community-based organizations can play a powerful role in
making the benefits of technology both meaningful and available
in poor urban neighborhoods," says Maxine Rockoff, who launched
an ambitious technology program for the settlement houses.

Yet, as noted above, the Telecommunications Act of 1996
authorized the FCC to order telecommunications discounts only
for schools, libraries, and rural health care providers.
Community activists can encourage their state regulatory
agencies to include community centers and other access programs
among those eligible for discounts.

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                      Four: What's Working


While much remains to be done, communities around the country
are using information and communications technologies to fight
poverty and social isolation. Here, we highlight just a handful
of projects that demonstrate the potential for creating new
markets for small enterprise, providing job training programs,
establishing after-school enrichment programs for at-risk youth,
and supporting community organizations as information content
providers.

Using technology to support community-based industry: ACENet

Citizens in Appalachia are using interactive technologies to tie
their communities into the new world economy. The Appalachian
Community Economic Network, or ACENet, was started in 1985 to
help small businesses in the impoverished rural area find new
markets. With ACENet's help, more than 20 entrepreneurs have
found customers through the Public WebMarket, a project
orchestrated by the Center for Civic Networking. To help small
businesses get started, ACENet has developed a computer loan
program. Beneficiaries include the Runges, owners of a
mom-and-pop machine shop operation with three employees, who
were able to increase their profitability with a computer leased
from ACENet and purchase their own, more sophisticated computer
system. Similarly, three women living in rural West Virginia
used a computer leased from ACENet to coordinate shipping and
distribution for a network of 40 home-based knitters. The
network, in partnership with a larger company, uses the Internet
to receive orders for custom knitwear from all over the world.
Another entrepreneur, a mother with four children, receives
email orders from around the world for herbs she grows.

Beginning in the fall of 1997, ACENet set out to train 18
students in the use of technology, entrepreneurship, basic
workplace skills, and how to be a consultant. At the end of the
year, the students will either own or work at a technology
consulting and training facility, or they may decide to move on
to higher education in order to further their technology skills.

Training 20th-century citizens for 21st-century jobs: The South
Bristol Learning Network

People are not "disadvantaged," argues John O'Hara. They are
"dislocated from the creation of wealth." What's more, he adds,
"if they do not become involved in the creation of digital
wealth, they will become even more dislocated."

O'Hara, who believes that "digital wealth" will be the most
valued commodity in the global economy, secured a $1 million
challenge grant from the British government in 1993 to establish
the South Bristol Learning Network (SBLN) as a private nonprofit
organization dedicated to creating an advanced information
infrastructure. Dislocation was readily apparent in South
Bristol, which had lost more than 40,000 jobs in the 1980s.

SBLN began by training 50 long-term unemployed South Bristol
residents in information technologies, including email, database
creation, web page development, CD-ROMs, business marketing, and
the Internet. Once trained, the staff went into the community
and evaluated 300 local education groups, community centers, and
businesses to assess their information needs and better
understand how to create a local information society. From these
assessments, SBLN developed a plan to raise the community's
awareness of information technologies, provide training, and
build partnerships. In the process, they created a market for
the trainers' new skills. SBLN staff went on to run skill
workshops, provide technical services for local businesses, and
give presentations about the Internet and information
technologies. Of the 50 staffers originally hired, only seven
have returned to the unemployment rolls.

O'Hara now heads the CyberSkills Workshops, dedicated to
replicating the design and success of SBLN elsewhere in England,
Europe, and the United States. More than 10,000 people
representing 1,200 organizations have participated in the
workshops. The South Bristol Learning Network model is being
applied in Burlington, Vermont, at the Old North End
Community/Technology Center, a project of Chittenden Community
Television (CCTV) headed by CCTV's executive director
Lauren-Glenn Davitian. CCTV and the city of Burlington started
ONE C/TC to serve as a community media center and a local center
for technology training. Like the South Bristol Learning
Network, ONE C/TC recruits disenfranchised community members to
serve as trainers and staff. More recently, it began focusing
more on providing job training and information on how to develop
small businesses.

A trusted service provider incorporates technology into its
programs: United Neighborhood Houses of New York

Settlement houses provide Head Start programs, health education,
job training, teen counseling, music, drama, language classes,
and much more to at least half a million of New York City's
residents. So it was a safe bet that if the settlement houses
made the Internet available, people would show up and they have.

The United Neighborhood Houses of New York (UNH), an umbrella
organization formed to help the settlement movement participate
in social reform efforts, launched its Information Technology
Initiative in 1991 with two overarching goals: to consolidate
recordkeeping among settlement house programs so that
caseworkers could spend more time meeting with their clients and
coordinating services with other nearby organizations, and to
provide safe, supportive, friendly telecommunications-based
resources for community use. According to technology training
coordinator Michael Roberts, UNH has helped nine settlement
houses establish computer networks and get Internet access. Each
of these houses has created "neighborhood-based family rooms" as
spaces for community members to use computers.

The settlement houses introduce community members to technology
by incorporating computers into other programs. After-school
tutors for children now use educational software, for example,
and job training workshops use computer databases. More than 29
settlement house programs have integrated computers into their
services.

Maxine Rockoff, who launched the program, recalls one group of
10 parents of children who were enrolled in Head Start programs
at UNH. Six did not speak English, and none had ever used a
computer before. Ten minutes after starting their first computer
class, they were working in pairs and surfing the World Wide
Web. One pair found an Ecuadorian website in Spanish that posted
local newspapers and scores from regional soccer games. Another
woman was so inspired by the session she signed up for a course
in English as a second language.

Community demand for computer time has been heavy. Melissa
Nieves, the librarian at a settlement house known as the
University Settlement, says there is a long waiting list to use
the 10 multimedia stations in the computer lab.

UNH currently is concentrating on training staff in business,
email, and Internet applications so that the settlement houses
can be sure that their clients are getting the most out of the
resources provided to them. UNH family rooms are understaffed,
but that is a problem that increased funding can easily solve.
The big question, according to Roberts, is not simply "how do
you weave technology into existing programs, but once you have,
how do you assess if it's working?"

Rockoff, meanwhile, now advises the city of New York on how it
can streamline its administrative requirements of service
providers. In a recent interview, Rockoff reported that "the
Settlement created great places for the community to learn about
technology, but we didn't succeed as much as we wanted in
reducing the paperwork load on the settlement houses."

Public institutions increasing access: Union City Schools and
Libraries Online!

Many schools and libraries are using their technology facilities
and their expertise in teaching to help communities gain skill
with information technologies. Examples of this include the
Union City School District in New Jersey and the libraries
participating in the Libraries Online! initiative, which became
the basis of the Gates Library Foundation.

Union City's school reform effort, supported by Bell Atlantic's
donations of technology and technical support, has been one of
the most successful and widely reported public-private
educational technology partnerships. In 1989, Union City schools
were about to be taken over by the state because of students'
poor academic performance. Then the school district adopted
several reforms, including revision of its curriculum. The
district formed a partnership with Bell Atlantic so that the
Christopher Columbus Intermediate School, formed in 1993 to
reduce overcrowding in other schools, would receive
multimedia-on-demand interactive applications. All Christopher
Columbus students and teachers were provided with computers to
use at home.

According to a 1994 report prepared by the Education Development
Center, a nonprofit research organization, student scores on
achievement tests increased dramatically throughout the district
after the school reform plans were implemented, with scores at
Christopher Columbus topping the district average.

Parents as well as students have benefited. Union City has been
running a Parent University in which students and their parents
sign up for classes on such topics as family math and family
science. Parents can take English as a second language and
computer classes. Adriana Burke, the Parent University
coordinator, reports that these programs have been an
overwhelming success. "The parents see how we are doing a good
job with their children," she says. "They see how much the
children use computers, and they want to get involved." She says
the program has inspired many parents to go back to school to
improve their workplace skills.

Libraries Online!, a joint project of Microsoft Corporation, the
American Library Association, and the Center for Technology in
the Public Library, was created to increase Internet access to
underserved communities through local libraries. Initially, nine
library systems in the United States received staff training,
computer hardware, and cash grants worth $3 million.
Participants included Charlotte-Mecklenberg County, North
Carolina; Baltimore County, Maryland; the Mississippi Library
Commission; the State Library of South Dakota; Brooklyn, New
York; Tucson-Pima County, Arizona; Los Angeles, California; and
Seattle and Pend Oreille County, Washington. Each of these
library systems offered training and support to small
businesses, families, and students who were not likely to have
access.

According to an outside evaluation, the time and money invested
in the program had been put to good use. Of all respondents, 98
percent stated that they would return to the library to use the
computers again, 83 percent said that they "had accomplished the
task they had set out to do," and 62 percent said that they
would "take advantage of learning more about computers now that
they have access in the library." Fully 87 percent of users
surveyed stated that they did not have Internet access at home.

The success of the Libraries Online! program prompted Microsoft
chair Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda French Gates, to create
The Gates Library Foundation in June 1997. The new foundation
will spend $200 million over five years to help public
libraries, primarily those in low-income areas, gain Internet
access. Microsoft will supply an additional $200 million of
software for the foundation to give away. The foundation also
will provide training and support for library staff. It hopes to
work with half of the 17,000 libraries in the United States and
Canada. Gates stated that his vision is that "people will take
for granted that you can walk into your local library, get the
latest book, and sit down at a computer." The first round of
grants, announced in early 1998, will benefit more than 1,000
libraries, including 95 percent of the public libraries in
Alabama, the foundation's first state partner.

Providing support and information for community technology
centers: CTCNet

Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCNet) grew out of the
Playing to Win storefront access centers founded by Toni Stone,
a high school math teacher. CTCNet is composed of more than 250
computer access centers throughout the United States and Europe.
All are committed to work toward a society where each member is
"equitably empowered by technology skills and usage." CTCNet
sponsors an annual conference, and six times a year it publishes
a news update describing activities at member organizations,
analyses of relevant policy developments, and discussions of
funding, software, and partnership possibilities. Members also
receive a start-up manual to help them work through the
challenges of starting and maintaining a technology center.
Regional CTCNet coordinators provide technical assistance to
local centers. CTCNet has been working closely with the
Department of Housing and Urban Development on the Neighborhood
Networks initiative, and many neighborhood networks will become
members of CTCNet. Also in the works are sites sponsored by the
National Urban League and Bell Atlantic. Many of the initiatives
discussed in this report are CTCNet members.

Using technology to strengthen neighborhood communications: The
AFN-Neighborhood Network and MUSIC/LUV

The AFN-Neighborhood Network is a joint project of the Austin
Free-Net (AFN), the Austin Learning Academy (ALA), and the 21st
Century Project at the University of Texas' Lyndon B. Johnson
(LBJ) Graduate Program in Public Policy. Together, the partners
are studying the theoretical and the practical side of
increasing access in Austin. A grant from the National Science
Foundation supports eight graduate students and two faculty
members who are studying how best to implement a community
access project. Their findings have led to the Austin Access
Model, a plan in which researchers and community members will
develop community computer networks in six areas of Austin. Each
network will offer training, neighborhood public access sites,
and links to the AFN.

The 21st Century Project and the ALA received a $248,000 TIIAP
matching grant to create the first community network in a
roughly five-block section of East Austin known as the 11th and
12th Street Corridor. Most of East Austin's 70,000 resident are
poor, and many are non-English-speaking.

Families participating in ALA classes on technology, English as
a second language, or parenting are working with students in the
LBJ program to design the AFN-Neighborhood Network. The
development of the network will take place in conjunction with
the implementation of a $9 million redevelopment grant for the
areas from HUD. The content will be developed specifically for
and by the region by local nonprofits, organizations, and
businesses.

Linking Up Villages (LUV) is a Boston-based project designed to
reinvigorate communities through local electronic bulletin
boards and software called Multi-User Sessions in Community
(MUSIC). "The LUV motto is, rather than focusing on National
Information Infrastructure, to us, NII is really about
Neighborhood Information Infrastructure," says Alan Shaw,
president of MUSIC, Inc., the for-profit counterpart to LUV.

Shaw designed the MUSIC software a few years ago at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. It enables
participants to create an online version of their communities,
complete with "buildings" and, within the buildings, "rooms."
Subject to rules adopted by individual communities, individuals
can "stroll" through this graphical "virtual neighborhood,"
obtain information on community services and activities, make
their own contributions to the database, participate in live
"chat" groups, or engage in sustained discussions through
various community forums. All that's needed is a computer and a
modem.

In Dorchester, a working-class Boston neighborhood, neighbors
who got together online formed a food co-op, a neighborhood
watch, and a community newsletter. In Newark, New Jersey, where
a TIIAP grant helped LUV install a more extensive system,
neighbors have put together a database on adult education
programs, an employment hotline, a "political action" room, and
discussion groups on everything from AIDS to recipes. Some local
doctors have come online to answer health questions.

Although LUV primarily operates in Newark, its sphere of
influence has been expanding. LUV's programs in Boston include a
TIIAP grant to collaborate with the Boston Public Schools for a
project, called Networking for Student Success, which will
connect six Boston high schools and five community-based
organizations and business partners, as well as the
establishment of a web-based community safety network, called
Citizens For Safety. In San Francisco, LUV is working with AT&T
and the Greenlining Institute on The Signature Learning Project,
which will connect parents whose children are in elementary
school with the school's teachers and administrators. The
families involved in The Signature Learning Project will receive
MUSIC software in addition to the home computers needed to run
it. In its Cincinnati project, LUV is teaming up with the Urban
League of Greater Cincinnati and MYCOM in order to establish
community network access centers, called Cybervillages, in the
Cincinnati area.

LUV gives away its software to needy communities, and provides
technical and start-up consultations for about $2,500. The big
cost for a community wanting to develop a system is the
computers. An $8,000 grant from the Wood Foundation helped put
computers into a dozen neighborhoods in Boston. TIIAP provided
$106,000 to help the Newark community purchase 35 computers and
pay other start-up costs. LUV encourages communities to put
computers in libraries and other public access locations and to
ask businesses to donate their used computers. In the last two
years, LUV has made great strides to ensure that all communities
could reap the benefits of their MUSIC software. Originally
designed to run on Macintosh systems, MUSIC is now available in
PC format, can be accessed through LUV Internet connections, and
will soon be accessible through an NT server.

Providing underserved youth with enrichment and training for the
jobs of the future: Break Away Technologies, Plugged In, and
National Urban League Youth Achievement Initiatives

Youth initiatives address a special need in low-income
communities. Children and young adults in neighborhoods
struggling with persistent poverty have few opportunities for
enrichment and positive growth within their immediate
neighborhoods, and their opportunities to explore the world
outside those boundaries are limited because they lack
transportation, money, and trustworthy guides. Just as adults in
these communities are isolated from jobs, kids are isolated from
opportunities to grow and develop. Interactive technologies and
the resources available on the World Wide Web can offer them new
learning experiences. Kids who have been shut out can use online
services to visit sites that show museums, cities, and wildlife
preserves they otherwise would not get to see, and they can
communicate with people who live far beyond neighborhood
boundaries.

After-school access programs provide enrichment opportunities
and training for the jobs and schools of the future. And, just
as importantly, they help teenagers constructively fill the
otherwise unstructured period between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
(Research done at the request of the California State
Legislature, for example, has revealed that the majority of teen
pregnancies are conceived in this time period.)

In most communities, crime committed by youth is growing faster
than most other types of crime, according to Steve Snow,
director of Charlotte's Web, the community access network in
Charlotte, North Carolina. "Young people see less and less
reason to play by the rules," he argues. "If young people are
not engaged in society (and electronic technology is part of a
matrix of key interventions needed), then we won't be able to
build the walls in the nation's suburbs high enough."

Break Away Technologies proves the value of youth initiatives.
Created by Joseph Loeb and run originally out of his garage, it
now has a 15,000-square-foot space in the Crenshaw Corridor, an
ethnically diverse, inner-city neighborhood in Los Angeles.
Break Away has about 100 computers primarily Pentiums, many of
which were donated by Microsoft. The center is open from 9 a.m.
to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday. Each day, about 400 elementary
school students from the West Los Angeles Christian Academy come
to the center for workshops. Each afternoon, about 50 teens
wander in to take classes and surf the Internet. On Fridays and
Saturdays, classes and services are available for adult
learners.

Break Away also works with groups in the community. A teen
development group, Rites of Passage, comes in for classes, as do
various kids living in group homes. Break Away leads young
people through a series of technology courses, each emphasizing
character development and personal responsibility, as well as
technology. As students advance through computer classes, they
take on more responsibility, working first as study partners and
then as mentors.

Loeb remembers one of the participants: "A young lady, probably
about 22 or 23, came to Break Away when it was still in my
garage to learn computer programming to try to get a job. She
had no experience with computers. So she learned some
programming, which back then was Lotus, and then got a job at
Sony. She's still there today and is doing very well." Loeb says
the center seeks to make students "visible examples of
leadership in the community." While computers aren't essential
in achieving that goal, the technology component of the program
also helps prepare youths for the labor market. "If someone is
computer literate and well-mannered, then he can go anywhere and
be comfortable," says Loeb.

Plugged In, Inc. works to develop self-esteem and leadership
qualities in young people in a similar style to Break Away. Open
for four years now, Plugged In is based in a storefront between
a check-cashing center and a boarded-up store on one of the main
roads through East Palo Alto. It offers 30 different classes,
ranging from beginning Macintosh, desktop publishing, and web
page design, to virtual cross-country trips. The Center is open
from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
on Saturdays and Sundays. It has about 35 computers and a staff
of 10 people.

Most of the classes Plugged In offers are in partnership with
local groups who bring in their clients. For example, Free At
Last, a drug recovery center across the street, offers Plugged
In's services to its clients.

Several teens, who started working with Plugged In during the
1996 Youth Employment Program, now run an after-school program
for elementary school children between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. each
day. The younger kids can get help on homework, play on the
computers, and surf the Net, or work on arts and crafts. From 5
p.m. to 9 p.m., teenagers come in to take classes or work on
projects.

Teens who have completed Plugged In classes run Plugged In
Enterprises, a for-profit arm of Plugged In. This business
includes a community drop-in center, which provides staff and
support if someone walks in and needs help with a resume,
designing and printing up a flyer, making copies, or doing
research on the Internet. A web design group creates web pages
for local businesses, and offers desktop publishing services.
Businesses pay up to $1,500 for a site. The teens who create and
maintain sites are paid from $7.50 to $15.00 an hour, while the
rest of the money earned goes into college funds maintained for
them.

Eleven youths, ranging in age from 13 to 18, all graduates of
Plugged In courses, participated in a rigorous three-week
team-building and training session and are now monitoring a teen
chat channel on America Online. The teens work in two production
teams, taking turns researching new topics and moderating online
discussions.

Aside from its money-making activities, Plugged In receives its
funding from private corporations and federal funds.

The National Urban League has also stepped up its focus on youth
achievement initiatives. While the Urban League's first
technology-based center opened in Los Angeles in 1968, early
work focused on adult learners and used mainframe computers for
COBOL programming, data entry, and system maintenance. More
recent initiatives are networked and include information and
workforce literacy programs for children and adults. They also
provide curriculum-based and non-structured community-based
access to the Internet. Some 30 Urban League affiliates have
"Technology Education and Access" (TEAC) centers in cities such
as Seattle, Newark, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. The League aims
to create 115 of these centers. B. Keith Fulton, director of the
League's technology center initiative, says the goal is to
create "a safe place for young people and caring adults to come
after school hours and on Saturdays to explore state-of-the-art
technology in a supportive environment." The centers offer
classes if participants want to develop a specific set of
skills, but they also welcome youth and adults who simply want
to drop in to explore on their own.

"Technology can even the playing field," says Milton J. Little,
Jr., the League's executive vice president and chief operating
officer. "It's changing the nature of interactions, and our
young people need to be ready." Fulton adds, "the Information
Age is spawning a new basic information literacy and all of our
children must learn to access, interpret, and respond to
information."

In 1996, Bell Atlantic provided $1 million to help the National
Urban League to create two high-tech access centers in Boston,
Massachusetts and Binghamton, New York. In 1997, the National
Urban League won a TIIAP grant to expand its technology center
initiative into Newark, New Jersey, and Baltimore, Maryland. The
Microsoft Corporation named the League one of three recipients
of its "1997 Nonprofit Technology Leadership Grants" and donated
$2.5 million in software. The League is using this software to
put all of its 115 affiliates on a common applications platform.
League affiliates in Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio, New
Jersey, and Washington are also running technology-based
initiatives for youth and adults. As Milton Little sees it,
these efforts continue a longstanding Urban League tradition.
"Eighty-eight years ago, the National Urban League was founded
to help African Americans migrating from the rural south to the
urban north," he notes. "Now, our country is experiencing a
societal transformation again, but this time with global
implications and unparalleled opportunities."

Fulton is hopeful about the future. "We know how to introduce
information and communications technologies into low-income
communities," he says. "The only remaining question is whether
we as a society are going to make enough of an investment in
underserved communities to make the necessary program and policy
connections."

----------
Resources

See also:
Benton's Cyber Pages  |  |

Losing Ground
Bit by Bit:
Resources

This section links you with the sources, programs, and studies
mentioned in the report, and suggests additional areas for
exploration.
Overview -- Trends & Policy

Surveys and Statistics

Organizations and Projects Pursuing Technology Equity in
Low-income Communities

Organizations and Agencies Working in Related Fields

Research Organizations

State Utility Commissioners and Public Advocates

----------
Resources Part I


Overview Trends and Policy

Access Denied
Austin Long-Scott
Outlook, vol. 8, no. 1, Summer 1995
Maynard Institute
longscot@athena.sfsu.edu
www.maynardije.org
     Austin Long-Scott is an associate professor of
     journalism at San Francisco State University. "Access
     Denied" describes the risks that low-income and ethnic
     minority communities could be redlined as
     communications companies roll out advanced services.
     Long-Scott explores the implications if low-income
     communities and communities of color do not have
     access to community technologies that are becoming
     increasingly important for democratic participation.

Computing in the 90's: The Great Divide
Amy Harmon
Los Angeles Times, October 7, 1996
     Coupled with results from a phone survey, this article
     argues that Californians from both ends of the
     economic spectrum believe that technological literacy
     is important, particularly for children, but that only
     wealthy Americans have regular access to computers and
     the Internet. The article also considers the societal
     implications if this divide is not addressed. The
     telephone survey included interviews with 1,200
     California adults of various socioeconomic
     backgrounds.

Electronic World, Unchecked Problem?
Michelle Singletary
Washington Post, March 4, 1997
     The article outlines the federal government's
     commitment to stop using paper checks by 1998 and
     discusses the effects of this transition on recipients
     of government services. The piece details what
     percentage of people do not use banks, why they don't
     use them, and what steps the government is taking to
     ensure that these citizens aren't penalized by a new
     electronic system.

Focus on Generic Skills for Information Technology Literacy
Robert H. Anderson and Tora K. Bikson
Rand Corporation
January 1998
www.rand.org/publications/P/P8018
     In the context of providing universal access to
     electronic mail and related online access, the authors
     argue that generic, rather than application-specific,
     knowledge and skills should be the focus of computer
     literacy efforts, both for citizen participation as
     well as for job-related skills.

For Computer Have-Nots, A Web of School Problems
David Nakumura
Washington Post, March 11, 1998
     Nakamura shows how students with limited or no access
     to computers are falling behind their peers in the
     quality of their homework, the diversity of
     information and opinions available to them, and both
     technical and non-technical skills that will be needed
     in college and the workplace.

Gateways to Cyberspace: Discounts for Libraries and Schools are
an Investment in the Future
Mary R. Somerville
Washington Post, October 23, 1996
     This Op-Ed by the president of the American Library
     Association details the important role of schools and
     libraries in providing access to the Internet for all
     citizens, and explains the problems of cost that
     libraries face when trying to provide access. The
     article was written before the FCC's Federal-State
     Board on Universal Service made its recommendations,
     but the discussion on the importance of these public
     institutions in the digital age and the challenges
     they face are still very salient.

Getting America's Students Ready for the Twenty-First Century:
Meeting the Technology Literacy Challenge
U.S. Department of Education
June 29, 1996
www.ed.gov/Technology/Plan
     This Department of Education report on education and
     technology in elementary and secondary education
     highlights success stories and outlines why the
     Clinton Administration feels that technology is a
     crucial part of education today. The book also has
     statistics on what percentage of U.S. schools are
     connected, estimates on costs, and information on the
     role of the federal government in supporting
     technological innovations in the classroom. The
     Technology Literacy Challenge describes specific steps
     for the integration of technology into education for
     the country.

High Technology and Low-Income Communities: Prospects for the
Positive Use of Advanced Information Technology
Donald A. Schon, Bish Sanyal, and William J. Mitchell, editors
MIT University Press, forthcoming
web.mit.edu/sap/www/high-low (draft chapters)
     This set of papers from distinguished social
     scientists, planning practitioners, and technologists,
     as well as community organizers and activists, takes a
     pragmatic but critical look at the potential impacts
     of information technology on the form and function of
     cities; the political and social lives of communities;
     and the prospects for access to employment and
     education on the part of low-income populations.

Information Technology and Low-Income, Inner City Communities
Richard Krieg
The Journal of Urban Technology
vol. 3, no. 1, Fall 1995
     In a very useful overview, the article illustrates how
     much inner cities are excluded from public
     institutions, resources, and communications tools.
     Krieg also charts different types of technology
     applications that could be used to remedy inner-city
     residents' isolation. This issue of the Journal of
     Urban Technology on "Information Technologies and
     Inner City Communities" is a good resource.

The Learning Connection: Schools in the Information Age
Chris Conte
Benton Foundation
June 1997
www.benton.org/Library/Schools
     This report examines how educators are grappling with
     the difficult interplay of technological change and
     educational values. It also identifies key factors
     that make the connection work, and reviews major
     players in the education technology arena.

Making Government Work: Electronic Delivery of Federal Services
Office of Technology Assessment
September 1993
Government Printing Office (www.gpo.gov/ota)
www.wws.princeton.edu:80/~ota/disk1/1993/9333_n.html
     The report details the range of government services
     that could be delivered electronically. It analyzes
     both the advantages of such transitions saves money,
     shortens transaction time, and puts more resources at
     the fingertips of more people and the disadvantages
     requires advanced planning and could leave poorer
     Americans behind in access to services. The
     publication has examples of successful applications
     and improved service delivery as well as what must be
     taken into account if these telecommunications tools
     are going to benefit all Americans.

The New Definition of Universal Service
Benton Foundation
June 1997
www.benton.org/Updates/summary.html
     This report summarizes Federal Communications
     Commission's decisions concerning the principles on
     which universal service policy will be based, what
     package of services will constitute basic service, and
     support for low-income consumers.

New Jersey Telephone Plan Neglects the Poor, Critics Say
Melody Petersen
New York Times, April 17, 1997
     As high-tech communications services are introduced,
     who's getting them first and who's getting passed
     over? This article describes public interest
     advocates' efforts in New Jersey to ensure the less
     immediately profitable regions of the state aren't
     bypassed by Bell Atlantic for fiber optic cable
     service. The article suggests that advocates' fears
     may be coming to fruition, because although "the
     company has hooked up suburban business parks and
     large corporations and set a schedule for suburban
     neighborhoods... [it] has not yet made specific plans
     for the thousands of poor people who live in the
     state's largest cities."

The Next Generation of Universal Service: Discounts for Schools
and Libraries
Benton Foundation
December 10, 1996
www.benton.org/Library/Nextgen/discounts.html
     Benton's publication presents the Federal-State Joint
     Board on Universal Service's proposals to the Federal
     Communications Commission on how to implement the
     Telecommunications Act's universal service provisions,
     particularly the required discounts for schools and
     libraries for communications services.

Preparation for Addressing Universal Service Issues: A Review of
Current Interstate Support Mechanisms
Common Carrier Bureau
Federal Communications Commission
February 23, 1996
www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Reports/univserv.txt
     This extremely detailed document prepared by an FCC
     Universal Service Task Force focuses on why and how
     universal service policies should be changed. For the
     non-policy junkie, the first few pages have a great,
     fairly simple overview of exactly which populations do
     not have phone service, the most likely reasons why,
     the current universal service policies designed to
     make phone service more affordable, and why these are
     still falling short. The report then analyzes in depth
     how aspects of phone service and universal service
     policies could be adjusted.

Rural America at the Crossroads: Networking for the Future
Office of Technology Assessment
1991
Government Printing Office (www.gpo.gov/ota)
www.wws.princeton.edu:80/~ota/disk1/1991/9136_n.html
     An in-depth analysis of rural communities, the
     potential role for telecommunications in these
     communities, and the stakes if these areas are not
     able to adapt to changing global economies, this
     report by the OTA details economic statistics and
     offers examples of telecommunications infrastructures
     that could be established in rural America. Published
     in 1991, it's not a source of the most recent data,
     but the report's coverage of the long-term trends that
     will be affecting rural communities in the coming year
     is helpful.

Society's Digital Divide
Janet Kornblum
C|Net
March 14, 1997
www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,8834,00.html
     Kornblum interviews James Katz, author of a Bellcore
     study on Internet access, funded by the Markle
     Foundation. Katz argues that the "digital divide" for
     the economically impoverished, ethnic minorities and
     women is cause for serious concern and will get worse
     instead of better in the future.

States.org
www.states.org
and
www.states.org/contents/about/info
     States.org is an ambitious attempt to provide all
     communications-related information for each state. If
     you search by state, you may see what information a
     state has about its universal service plans, its
     definition of basic telephone service, and much more.
     States.org has not yet compiled or linked to all
     information in all states, but it's an excellent place
     to start.

The Technological Reshaping of Metropolitan America
Office of Technology Assessment
September 1995
Government Printing Office (www.gpo.gov/ota)
www.wws.princeton.edu:80/~ota/disk1/1995/9508_n.html
     Printed in 1995, this publication by the now defunct
     Office of Technology Assessment describes how
     communications and information technologies are
     affecting rural, suburban, and urban areas in the
     United States. It evaluates how advances in technology
     are allowing companies to change location, the type
     and numbers of workers they hire, and what they hire
     workers for. It also does an excellent job of
     assessing the potential negative impacts of
     technological advances on regions already economically
     at risk, such as urban cores.

Telewars in the States: Telecommunications Issues in a New Era
of Competition
Thomas W. Bonnett
Council of Governors' Policy Advisors
1996
www.ctr.columbia.edu/vii/univsvce/universa.htm
     Telewars in the States evaluates states' role in
     telecommunications in the wake of the
     Telecommunications Act of 1996. Bonnet includes
     chapters on the increasing significance of
     telecommunications for states, the evolution of the
     telephone industry, state regulation of
     telecommunications policy, and, most importantly for
     this report, the policy choices facing the states.
     Chapter Five has a helpful description of federal
     universal service policies and some of the possible
     options for the states in this area.

Universal Access to Email: Feasibility and Societal Implication
Robert H. Anderson, Tora K. Bikson, Sally Ann Law, and Bridger
M. Mitchell Center for Information Revolution Analyses
RAND Corporation
1995
www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR650/note.html
     This final report of a two-year RAND study looks at
     the value of universal email and recommends all
     citizens have access to technology. The report focuses
     on fundamental social, economic, international, and
     technical issues related to providing universal access
     to email within the United States.

Urban Poverty and Access to I.T.: A role for local government
Lisa J. Serron and John B Horrigan
Journal of Urban Technology
Dec. 1997, p. 61, vol. 4, no. 3
     This article examines the impact on society that
     inadequate and inequitable access to technology will
     have, arguing that "failure to address the current
     imbalances in [information technology] users will
     result in a society with more deeply entrenched
     imbalances between historically privileged and
     historically disenfranchised groups."

Using Technology to Revitalize Low Income Communities:
Transforming the Work Force
Yvonne Craver
Multifamily Executive
August 1996
     This article, written by the chief executive officer
     of Edgewood Technology Services, discusses one way in
     which technology can be used to assist low-income
     communities: to bring jobs into the communities.
     Founded in Edgewood Terrace apartment complex in
     Washington, DC, ETS is a business whose employees live
     in the complex and "use state-of-the-art computerized
     workstations... [to] perform a wide variety of
     data-related services." According to the article, the
     benefits of having the business in the same building
     as its employees live is twofold. Not only is it
     convenient for employees to work so close to their
     homes, but much more significantly, it provides an
     economic boost for the entire community, rather than
     for a very few fortunate individuals.

Welfare to Work Difficulties
"All Things Considered"
National Public Radio
May 20, 1997
www.npr.org/ramfiles/970520.atc.15.ram (Real Audio file)
     This piece, reported by Kathleen Schalch, describes
     the problems many welfare recipients will face trying
     to hold new jobs because of the inadequacy of cities'
     public transportation systems. Commutes that would
     take 30 minutes in a car can add up to several hours
     by bus. Most public transportation systems still run
     on the outdated premise that people are coming from
     the suburbs into the cities for work. Many new jobs
     are appearing in corporate parks in the suburbs, and
     it is difficult to get from one suburban area to
     another by public transportation without having to go
     into and then back out of the city.

What's Fair: American Beliefs about Distributive Justice
Jennifer L. Hochschild
Harvard University Press, 1981
     Through a series of interviews and research with
     Americans from all sectors of society, Hochschild
     illustrates how people decide what goods and services
     should be equally available to every one. While not
     specifically about technology, the book is useful in
     understanding cultural mindsets.

What's Up With Wages
Alan B. Krueger
Goldman Sachs
U.S. Economic Research
November 13, 1997
     This article examines how wages are barely keeping
     pace with consumer price index increases.

When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor
William Julius Wilson
Knopf, 1996
     Wilson, an unofficial advisor to President Clinton and
     a respected thinker on issues of race and poverty,
     offers his take on welfare and inner-city joblessness.
     He argues that the disappearance of unskilled,
     decent-paying jobs is the main source of U.S. urban
     problems.

Where Jobless Could Meet Jobs
The Washington Post, April 29, 1997
     This editorial explores a major problem of the
     northern Virginia's "booming" technology industry
     plenty of work and not enough technologically skilled
     laborers to do it. The editorial suggests that a
     widely overlooked but practical solution to the
     problem would be to train the District's unemployed to
     do the technical jobs in northern Virginia. According
     to the editorial, "the gap is only one part distance
     and about nine parts skills."

Surveys and Statistics

1997 National Survey of U.S. Public Libraries and the Internet
John Bertot, Charles R. McClure, Patricia Diamond Fletcher
American Library Association Office for Information Technology
Policy
May 1997
www.ala.org/oitp/research
     Using data collected between March and May 1997, this
     report goes into great detail about the numbers and
     types of Internet access at public libraries
     throughout the nation. Major findings include that
     more than 72 percent of all public libraries have some
     type of Internet connection, up from 44.6 percent just
     one year before. Rural libraries are 20 percent less
     likely than urban libraries to have access. The survey
     also found that more than 60 percent of all libraries
     provide public access to the Internet.

Advanced Telecommunications in U.S. Public Elementary and
Secondary Schools
Sheila Heaviside, Toija Riggins, and Elizabeth Farris (Westat,
Inc.)
U.S. Department of Education
National Center for Education Statistics
Fall 1996
www.nces.ed.gov/pubs/97944.html
     This survey took information from public schools on
     the availability of the Internet and other advanced
     telecommunications tools for students and teachers. It
     documents typical support mechanisms for advanced
     communications and charts schools' future plans for
     increasing technology in their programs. Most of the
     data has been broken down by a school's location
     (urban, rural, etc), percent minority student body,
     percent of student body on school-lunch programs,
     geographic region, and size of enrollment.

Beyond Universal Service: Characteristics of Americans without
Telephones, 1980-1993
Jorge Reina Schement
Benton Foundation
1994
www.benton.org/Library/Universal/Working1/working1.html
     Schement analyzes the 6 percent of American citizens
     who do not have phone service and discusses why this
     group primarily composed of the elderly, the poor,
     blacks, Hispanics, and women with children is not able
     to maintain phone connections. He also discusses the
     troubling effects of excluding these populations from
     such a critical communications tool.

Bridging the Digital Divide: The Impact of Race on Computer
Access and Internet Use
Thomas P. Novak, Donna L. Hoffman
Project 2000
Vanderbilt University
February 2, 1998
www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu/papers/race/science.html
     This report analyzes demographic patterns of Internet
     access and computer usage from late 1996 to early
     1997. It systematically examines the differences
     between African Americans and whites in the United
     States in regard to the influence of education and
     income on access.

Buildings, Books, and Bytes: Libraries and communities in the
digital age
Benton Foundation
November 1996
www.benton.org/Library/Kellogg
     Americans love libraries, but will they follow them
     into the digital age? A report prepared by the Benton
     Foundation and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
     reveals what experts and the public think. Based on a
     national public opinion survey and interviews with
     leading library and information professionals, the
     report offers some first steps in helping libraries
     lead their communities into the digital age.

Closing the Digital Divide: Enhancing Hispanic Participations in
the Information Age
Anthony Wilhelm
Tomas Rivera Policy Institute
April 1998
www.cgs.edu/inst/trc.html
     This study, not available online as of publication
     time, found that home computer ownership among
     Hispanics has risen significantly in the last few
     years, up from 13 percent in 1994 to 30 percent in
     1998. But, the report reminds us, 34 percent of
     Hispanics have still never used a computer.

Computers and Classrooms: The Status of Technology in U.S.
Schools
Education Testing Service (ETS)
1997
www.ets.org/research/pic/compclass.html
     This ETS policy information report provides a snapshot
     of the use and effectiveness of technology in American
     schools. Print copies are available for $9.50;
     electronic copies (in PDF format) are available on
     their website. A good summary of the report's findings
     can be found at www.ets.org/research/pic/cc-sum.html.

Ensuring Telephone Access in the Digital Age
Mark Cooper
Center for Media Education
February 25, 1998
www.cme.org/telephoneaccess.html
     This report finds that 18 percent of poverty-level
     households in the U.S. have no phone service,
     including 3 percent of those with children. Even at
     incomes of twice the poverty level, 15 percent of
     households with children have no phone service.
     Overall 6 percent of U.S. households have no service.

Home Technology Report Executive Summary
Nielsen Media Research
July 1996
www.nielsenmedia.com/interactive/news/hotech-summary.shtml
     This large phone survey evaluates what percentage of
     U.S. households have computers, Internet access, video
     games, cell phones, etc., by age, income, and other
     variables. See also their Fall 1997 Internet
     Demographic Study at
     www.nielsenmedia.com/interactive/commercenet/F97.

Motivations for and Barriers to Internet Usage: Results of a
National Public Opinion Survey
James Katz, Ph.D
Bellcore
October 6, 1996
katz@bellcore.com
www.markle.org

Katz's report, funded by the Markle Foundation, analyzes
responses from an October 1995 phone survey that asked not only
who in the household was on the Internet, but, if no one, why
not, and what would make it easier. The phone survey found among
other things that 69 percent of the 2,500 surveyed had heard of
the Internet, but never been on it, and 15 percent of those
questioned had never heard of it.

NUA surveys
www.nua.ie/surveys
     This service compiles Internet-related survey data and
     demographics from a variety of sources and posts it to
     their website. In addition, they run a mailing list
     that sends out weekly updates of various Internet
     usage information, with a particular eye on "how many
     are online?" A type of Internet demographics news
     service.

The State of Working America 1996-97
Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and John Schmitt
Economic Policy Institute
1997
www.epinet.org/epswa-ex.html
     The report found that between 1979 and 1995, real
     wages dropped 23 percent for people with less than a
     high school education and 12 percent for those with
     only a high school diploma, while they rose 4 percent
     for college graduates and 12 percent for people with
     advanced degrees.

Telephone Penetration by Income By State
Alexander Belifante
Federal Communications Commission
Common Carrier Bureau
Industry Analysis Division
January 1998
www.fcc.gov/ccb/stats (report #PNTRIS97.ZIP)
     This document provides the data on phone
     subscribership as of November 1997, broken down by
     household income. It also analyzes the differences in
     phone penetration growth between states that have
     Lifeline and states that don't. The first few pages
     have an easily digestible summary; the rest of the
     report is numbers. Hard copies may be purchased from
     International Transcription Services, Inc. at
     202.857.3800.

Technology in the American Household: Explosive Growth,
Uncertain Destinations
Pew Research Center for The People and The Press
October 16, 1995
www.people-press.org/tech.htm
     This early report analyzes who owns computers, uses
     email, and is on the web by income, age, education,
     and gender. It also reports how often people get
     online, what types of listservices people are using,
     and the politics of those online.

U.S. Household PC Penetration Passes 45 percent
Roger C. Lanctot
Computer Retail Week, March 11, 1998
     Citing statistics collected by Computer Intelligence's
     1998 Consumer Technology Index, the story points out
     that ownership of home computers jumped 5 percent in
     1997, translating into the fact that over 45 percent
     of all households own home computers.

Web Users are Looking More Like Americans
David Birdsell, Douglas Muzzio, David Krane, Amy Cottreau
Harris Survey Unit of Baruch College and Louis Harris &
Associates
The Public Perspective, April/May 1998
www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/pubper/pdf/pp93b.pdf (Adobe PDF file)
     This study found that the population accessing the
     World Wide Web increasingly reflects the general
     population: men and women almost equally use the web;
     and "the web population now reflects a racial
     breakdown statistically indistinguishable from U.S.
     Census data for the general population." The report
     admits, however, that differences still exist in the
     areas of education and income. "A person is still more
     likely to bump into web users who have college degrees
     and incomes of at least $50,000." Adults with a high
     school education or less (52 percent of the adult
     American population) account for only 19 percent of
     those using the web.

----------
Resources Part II


Organizations and Projects Pursuing Technology Equity in
Low-Income Communities

Alliance for Community Media
Bunnie Riedel, Executive Director
666 11th Street, NW, Suite 806
Washington, DC 20001-4542
Tel: 202.393.2650
www.alliancecm.org
     The Alliance for Community Media is a national
     membership organization that focuses on achieving
     equal access to electronic media. The Alliance
     provides technical assistance, promotes successful
     public interest applications of technology, and
     advocates for regulatory support for its members over
     950 public, educational, and government access
     centers.

Alliance for Community Technology
Katherine Willis, Director of Program Development
c/o School of Information
University of Michigan
610 E. University Avenue
Suite 4020
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1259
Tel: 734.763.2281
Fax: 734.647.8045
kwillis@umich.edu
www.communitytechnology.org
     In an effort to address the gap between the potential
     of technology and the capacity of people and
     communities to use it to solve problems, ACT promotes
     the creation, use, evaluation, and propagation of
     appropriate technologies in support of communities.

Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACENet)
94 North Columbus Road
Athens, OH 45701
Tel: 740.592.3854
Fax: 740.593.5451
www.seorf.ohiou.edu/~acenet
     The Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACENet)
     connects citizens to community-based networks and
     entrepreneurs to new and larger markets via the World
     Wide Web. Using ACENet's services, which include a
     computer leasing program, Appalachian residents work
     to improve the region's impoverished economy.

AFN-Neighbor Network
c/o Austin Learning Academy
PO Box 6923
Austin, TX 78762-6923
Tel: 512.457.9194
     A project of the Austin Learning Academy
     (www.alaweb.org), the Austin FreeNet
     (www.austinfree.net), and the 21st Century Project at
     the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas
     (www.utexas.edu/lbj/21cp), the AFN-Neighbor Network
     works with East Austin residents to create a community
     network with local content, nearby access sites, and
     training programs. Eventually, the project will create
     community networks in six underserved areas of Austin
     and connect each to the Austin FreeNet.

Break Away Technologies
3417 W. Jefferson Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90018
Tel: 213.737.7677
Fax: 213.299.8226
www.breakaway.org
     Founded by Joseph Loeb in the wake of the Los Angeles
     riots, Break Away Technologies started as a computer
     center in Loeb's garage and has grown into a
     15,000-foot access center in South Central L.A. Using
     donated computers with Pentium processors, Loeb runs
     technology classes for neighborhood residents and area
     schools. Break Away uses technology to teach
     leadership and responsibility, facilitating students'
     successful entry into the increasingly
     technology-oriented workforce.

BrookLynX
Brooklyn Information & Culture (BRIC)
(formerly the Fund for the Bureau of Brooklyn)
30 Flatbush Avenue, Suite 427
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Tel: 718.855.7882
Fax: 718.802.9095
bklynx@brooklynx.org
www.brooklynx.org
     The organization supports artistic, cultural, and
     informational community projects for Brooklyn, New
     York, hosting such events as the yearly Celebrate
     Brooklyn Arts Festival, Brooklyn Community Access
     Television, and the Meet Me in Brooklyn cultural tour.
     BrookLynX, one of the organization's projects, acts as
     a community network and, with the help of a TIIAP
     grant, is connecting three community computing centers
     to the Internet and assisting in the development of a
     staff training program and web pages for each center.

California Telecommunications Policy Forum
Armando Valdez, Chair
210 San Antonio Circle, Suite 152
Mountain View, CA 94022-1234
Tel: 650.917.6600
Fax: 650.917.6601
AValdez@aol.com
     California Telecommunications Policy Forum is a
     communications network for community leaders in
     California among low-income and Latino neighborhoods.
     Initially supported by a grant from the
     Telecommunications Education Trust (TET), the Forum
     spearheads dialogues on the roles activists in
     California might play in policy development,
     particularly telecommunications policy, to ensure that
     their communities are served rather than excluded by
     new communications infrastructures. See also "Staking
     Out the Public Interest in the Merger Between Pacific
     Telesis and Southwestern Bell Corporation"
     (www.ucan.org/ucan/news/whte_1.htm).

Charlotte's Web
Steve Snow, Executive Director
119 E. Seventh St.
Charlotte, NC 28202
Tel:704.332.1610
shsnow@charweb.org
www.charweb.org
     Charlotte's Web is a regional interactive
     telecommunications network in Charlotte, North
     Carolina. In addition to affordable Internet access,
     the service provides low-cost community training
     courses, and local community information terminals.

Community Technology
Centers Network (CTCNet)
Peter Miller, Network Director
55 Chapel Street
Newton, MA 02158
Tel: 617.969.7100
Fax: 617.332.4318
ctcnet@edc.org
www.ctcnet.org
     CTCNet is a membership organization of over 250
     computer access centers in the United States. These
     access centers may be partnered with schools, museums,
     community centers, or churches, but they all promote
     the idea of equitable access to technology. CTCNet
     provides its affiliates with policy updates, advocacy
     information, training opportunities, and financial
     tips.

Community Technology Institute
Patricia Barry, Executive Director
PO Box 61385
Seattle, WA 98121
Tel/Fax: 206.441.7872
info@cvm.org
www.cvm.org
     Community Technology Institute seeks to improve the
     delivery of social services and relieve human
     suffering through their Community Voice Mail program.
     CVM now operates in 25 cities including Boston,
     Houston, Los Angeles, and Spokane bringing
     community-wide access to voice mail for an estimated
     15,000 homeless or phoneless people every day.

Computers in Our Future
3580 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1660
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Tel: 213.368.2373
Fax: 213.368.2371
ciof@aol.com
www.compfuture.org/compfuture
     Recognizing that more than half of all new jobs
     require technology literacy, and that information
     literacy costs California business an estimated $4
     billion annually, the California Wellness Foundation
     established Computers in Our Future, a $6 million,
     five-year initiative to develop 11 community computer
     training centers in low-income neighborhoods across
     California. Partners include Community Partners, The
     Children's Partnership, and CompuMentor.

Downtown Neighborhood Learning Center
Marcia Newman, Executive Director
Margaret Quintana, Program Manager
1001 West Jefferson Street
Phoenix, AZ 95007-2913
Tel: 602.256.0784
Fax: 602.256.2524
dnlc@swlink.net
www.swlink.net/~dnlc
     DNLC, located in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, is a
     street-front adult education program serving homeless
     and other disadvantaged adults since 1989. Services
     include community voice mail, basic adult education,
     GED diploma preparation, career testing and computer
     literacy and Internet skills.

Eastmont Computing Center/ OCCUR
David Geilhufe, Director
7200 Bancroft Avenue
Suite 209, Eastmont Town Center
Oakland, CA 94605-1970
Tel: 510.382.0555
Fax: 510.268.9065
geilhufe@hooked.net
www.eastmont.net
     The Eastmont Computing Center currently provides high
     school students with 18 months of training and
     placement services to transition youth into
     information tech-nology employment. We also provide
     connectivity and technical resources to the local
     community supporting schools, libraries, and churches
     in addition to our own public computer and Internet
     access site.

Eiffel Project
Bruce Lincoln, Manager of Community Outreach and Development
Institute for Learning Technologies (ILT)
Columbia University
525 West 120th Street, Box 144
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 212.678.4000
Fax: 212.678.4048
info@ilt.columbia.edu
www.ilt.columbia.edu/eiffel
     Funded by a U.S. Department of Education Challenge
     Grant, the Eiffel Project is a collaboration of ILT,
     the Center for Collaborative Education, and the New
     York City Board of Education, that seeks to improve
     dramatically the educational experience of
     disadvantaged children in urban schools.

Email for All Campaign
International Advisory Group
875 Avenue of the Americas,
Suite 1005
New York, NY 10001
Tel: 212.268.1443
Fax: 212.268.1113
iaclaa@aol.com
www.iaginteractive.com/emfa/about.htm
     This new project of the Markle Foundation seeks to
     encourage the use of new communications technologies
     for socially beneficial purposes. In May 1998, the
     campaign "hosted" an online conversation about four
     themes pertaining to universal service: Universal
     E-Mail, Universal Internet, Networking Communities,
     and Private and Public Roles. Archives and reports
     from the event may be found at
     www.iaginteractive.com/emfa/uac.htm.

Gates Library Foundation
P. O. Box 3189
Redmond, Washington 98073
Tel: 425.882.1200
Fax: 425.556.0218
info@glf.org
www.glf.org
     The Gates Library Foundation was formed by Bill and
     Melinda Gates to provide public libraries in
     low-income areas with the computer equipment required
     for community access to digital information. In
     addition, the foundation supports training and
     technical assistance to library staff members to
     effectively manage computer systems, use digital
     information, and provide appropriate assistance to
     their patrons. An earlier Microsoft project, Libraries
     Online! (www.librariesonline.org), provided grants,
     training, and technical assistance to public
     libraries, enabling them to offer public access to
     personal computers and the Internet. This $15 million
     project benefited libraries in 260 communities in the
     United States, Canada, and Ireland between 1995 and
     1997.

Inner City Youth
Technology Program
Brenda Atkins Lockley, Executive Director
Neighborhood Housing Services, Inc.
901 Western Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15233
Tel: 412.321.0121
Fax: 412.321.6411
or
Chuck Half, Funding Coordinator
Tel: 412.487.4545
Fax: 412.487.2894
chalf@ctronsoft.com
     A project of Pittsburgh's Neighborhood Housing
     Services, Inc., the program provides free neighborhood
     access for middle school children to desktop
     computing, Internet, and multimedia technologies.
     Piloting in Pittsburgh this summer (1998), if
     successful, NHS plans to offer the service to other
     cities across the nation.

International Education and Resource Network (I*EARN)
Lisa Jobson
475 Riverside Drive, Suite 540
New York, NY 10115
Tel: 212.870.2693
Fax: 212.870.2672
iearn@iearn.org
www.iearn.org
     I*EARN, which has been pioneering the use of
     communications technology for education since 1988,
     has recently created an initiative that involves youth
     previously excluded from the Internet namely those
     young people who are institutionalized, not enrolled
     in schools, homeless, runaways, or orphans. Working
     with P.S.106 run by Covenant House in New York, the
     Fourth World Movement, and Harlem and South Bronx
     church groups, the program uses I*EARN's existing
     international network of educators and students to
     provide technical skills and educational opportunities
     that might otherwise be unavailable.

Kids Computer Workshop
Norman Eisen, President
1201 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202.778.1824
Fax: 202.822.8106
www.kcw.org
     Kids Computer Workshop brings technology and mentoring
     to Washington's at-risk children, teaching computer
     skills with a focus on activities that develop
     literacy and critical thinking. The project provides a
     safe, supportive place during out-of-school hours
     where young people are exposed to positive rolemodels
     and can build confidence and self-esteem.

Legal Aid Society of Dayton
Ellis Jacobs, Litigation Director
Telephone & Technology Access Project
333 W. First Street, Suite 500
Dayton, OH 45402
Tel: 513.228.8088 x111
Fax: 513.449.8131
ejacobs@donet.com
     Jacobs represents low-income community organizations
     in telecommunications proceedings before the Ohio
     Public Commission and the FCC. He also chairs both the
     Ohio Community Computing Center Network, which
     administers the Ameritech Settlement Community
     Computing Friends, and the Universal Service
     Assistance Advisory Committee, which oversees a
     telephone lifeline program in Ohio.

LUV/MUSIC
Linking Up Villages
33 Algonquin Street
Dorchester, MA 02124
Tel: 617.436.8048
Fax: 617.282.2020
     Linking Up Villages (LUV) is a project designed to
     reinvigorate communities through local electronic
     bulletin boards and software called Multi-User
     Sessions in Community (MUSIC). MUSIC software allows
     users to walk through a "virtual neighborhood,"
     obtaining information on community services and
     events. LUV sets up networks and gives free software
     to needy communities. They finance their efforts
     partly with revenues produced from selling their
     software to companies and communities that can afford
     it, and partly through grants received from sources
     like the Department of Commerce's Telecommunications
     Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP).

MCI Library Link
Christa Poston (MCI public affairs)
Tel: 202.887.2757
www.librarylink.com
     Between 1993 and 1998, MCI has awarded over $1 million
     in technology grants to 400 public library branches to
     fund technology projects. "As a leading Internet
     provider, MCI understands that limited public access
     is one of the greatest barriers to a community
     realizing the benfits of advanced communications
     technology," said Timothy F. Price, President and
     Chief Operating Officer of MCI. "Through the
     LibraryLINK program, MCI is empowering our nation's
     libraries and the communities they serve with access
     to information technology."

National Consumer Law Center
18 Tremont Street, Suite 400
Boston, MA 02108
Tel: 617.523.8010
Fax: 617.523.7398
or
1629 K Street, NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20006
Tel: 202.986.6060
Fax: 202.463.9462
consumerlaw@nclc.org
www.nclc.org
     Founded more than twenty-five years ago at Boston
     College School of Law, NCLC's staff of 11 attorneys
     addresses the legal problems faced daily by low-income
     and financially distressed families, ranging from
     repossessions, debt collection abuses, home
     improvement frauds, usury, and bankruptcy to utility
     terminations, fuel assistance benefit programs,
     utility rate structures, and utility deregulation.
     They have a substantial library of reports and
     newsletters pertaining to consumer rights in the area
     of energy and utility, although the full text of their
     reports is only available by purchasing hard copies.

National Urban League
B. Keith Fulton, Director
Technology Programs and Policy Department
120 Wall Street
New York , NY 10005
Tel: 212.558.5300
Fax: 212.344.5332
bkfulton@nul.org
www.nul.org
     Founded in 1910, the National Urban League is the
     nation's premier social and civil rights organization.
     The League has operated technology-based initiatives
     in low-income communities since 1968. Through its 115
     Urban League affiliates in 34 states and the District
     of Columbia, the League promotes advocacy and program
     services focusing on the social and educational
     development of youth, economic self-sufficiency, and
     racial inclusion. The League's Technology Programs and
     Policy department was founded in 1996 to bring the
     benefits of information and communications technology
     to low-income citizens.

National Urban Technology Center
Carol Lawrence, Director of Administration
1204 Third Avenue, Suite 124
New York, NY 10021
Tel: 718.398.4525
Fax: 718.398.4470
contact@cfs.urbantech.org
www.urbantech.org
     This nonprofit organization seeks to prepare
     inner-city communities for full participation in the
     Information Age by helping them create technology and
     telecommunications infrastructures, and establish
     community training centers with computer courses and
     technical support, a Youth Leadership Academy that
     provides teens school-to-work opportunities, and a
     computer repair training program. Their website also
     acts as a type of community information network, a
     doorway to the Internet for the people they serve.

Neighborhood Networks
U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development
9300 Lee Highway
Fairfax, VA 22031
Tel: 888.312.2743
Fax: 703.934.3156
nnetworks@icfkaiser.com
www.hud.gov/nnw/nnwindex.html
     If all goes according to plan, this HUD-sponsored
     program will result in HUD-supported housing
     developments equipped with computer workstations,
     linking residents with educational and job training
     programs, microenterprise and telecommuting
     opportunities, and improved access to health care,
     wellness, and community and social service programs.

Neighborhoods Online
Institute for the Study of Civic Values
1218 Chestnut St., Rm. 702
Philadelphia, PA 19107.
Tel: 215.238.1434
Fax: 215.238.0530
Edcivic@libertynet.org
www.libertynet.org/community/phila/nol.html
http://www.libertynet.org/~edcivic/iscvhome.html
     The Neighborhoods Online network, which was founded in
     1992, provides local updates and calendars for
     activists in Philadelphia and links to data sets,
     resources, and other community organizing groups for
     activists around the nation. Ed Schwartz initiated
     Neighborhoods Online while at the Institute for the
     Study of Civic Values, an organization dedicated to
     the study of grassroots organizing.

Ohio Neighborhood
Resources Page
(formerly Urban University and Neighborhood Networks)
uac.rdp.utoledo.edu/DOCS/UUNN/UUNN.HTM
     The UUNN was a cooperative venture of 7 urban
     universities and more than 60 neighborhood-based
     organizations (NBOs) representing the Ohio cities of
     Akron, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton,
     Toledo, and Youngstown. While the UUNN has formally
     ended, the University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center
     maintains a variety of services to support
     neighborhood organizing and development in Ohio. The
     paper referred to in this report, "Limited Access: The
     Information Superhighway and Ohio's Neighborhood Based
     Organizations"
     (http://uac.rdp.utoledo.edu/DOCS/UUNN/accessT.htm)
     describes UUNN's work to study NBOs and how the
     Internet could improve their functioning.

Old North End Community/ Technology Center (ONE C/TC)
Chittenden Community Television (CCTV): Old North End
Community/Tech Center
294 North Winooski Avenue
Burlington, VT 05401
Tel: 802.862.3966
Fax: 802.860.2370
onectc@cctv.org
     ONE C/TC is a "learning network" established in
     Burlington, Vermont, based on the South Bristol
     Learning Network (SBLN) model. Like the SBLN, ONE C/TC
     started by recruiting the unemployed and instructing
     them to become the trainers and staff of the ONE C/TC
     technology training centers. At the technology
     training centers, the economically disadvantaged
     members of the community can acquire the knowledge and
     skills they need to get back on track in a job market
     that puts a very high value on computer skills.

Plugged In, Inc.
Bart Decrem, Executive Director
1923 University Avenue
East Palo Alto, CA 94303
Tel: 415.322.1134
Fax: 415.322.6147
www.pluggedin.org
     Located in one of Silicon Valley's poorest
     communities, Plugged In runs an after-school program
     for elementary school children, and from 5 until 9
     p.m., teenagers can take classes or work on projects
     at the center. Plugged In has a for-profit arm, called
     Plugged In Enterprises, which is run primarily by area
     teens. Among other things, Plugged In Enterprises
     provides assistance with tasks such as resume writing
     and Internet searching, designs websites for local
     businesses, and has even begun developing multimedia
     applications and programs.

Public Web Market
development.civicnet.org/webmarket
     The Public Web Market, sponsored by the Center for
     Civic Networking, supports regionally-based
     microenterprise and economic development in depressed
     regions of the country by assisting community-based
     organizations and small business in the use of
     electronic commerce.

Schools and Libraries Corporation
1023 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 22205
Tel: 202.289.2663
Fax: 202.289.7836
www.slcfund.org
     The Schools and Libraries Corporation is a
     not-for-profit group administering the new "e-rate"
     program to bring discounted telephone service and
     Internet connections to schools and libraries.

South Bristol Learning Network/
CyberSkills Association
South Bristol College Hartcliffe Centre
Hartcliffe, Bristol, UK B513ORJ
Tel: 44.117.946.5403
Fax: 44.117.964.1021
www.sbln.org.uk
     The South Bristol Learning Network (SLBN) was created
     by John O'Hara to reanimate the workforce of the
     economically depressed region of South Bristol,
     England. In September, 1993, O'Hara used a
     one-million-dollar challenge grant he had received
     from the British government to train 50 long-term
     unemployed residents of South Bristol in information
     technologies. The newly trained staff evaluated local
     groups and businesses and went on to give
     presentations and workshops on how these groups could
     make new technologies work for them. O'Hara is now
     focused on replicating the design and success of the
     SLBN elsewhere in England, Europe, and the United
     States through CyberSkills workshops.

Stockyard Area Development Association (SADA) Computer Ownership
for Neighbors
3288 West 58th Street
Cleveland, OH 44102
Tel: 216.631.1270
stockyards@juno.com
little.nhlink.net/nhlink/sada
     In the summer of 1995, SADA began a neighborhood
     development project that provides low-cost computers
     and affordable Internet access to their community's
     low-income residents. They have provided over 200
     computers, and have been successful in getting dial-up
     Internet access through a local PC users group and the
     Cleveland Public Library. The project is currently
     setting up their own community network.

Tech Center
Tent City
359 Columbus Avenue
Boston, MA 02116
Tel: 617.578.0597
Fax: 617.578.0755
tentcity@juno.com
     Tech Center, a joint project of Tent City Corporation
     and The Mass-achusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
     provides free or low-cost access to all aspects of
     information technology. They focus in particular on
     reaching previously disadvantaged communities.
     Programs include an after-school program to assist
     with homework, an open access evening program for
     adults to hone applications skills or update their
     resumes, and a network administrator program that
     teaches how to build, repair, and maintain computers.
     For every four computers a student fixes, she or he
     may take one home.

Union City Schools
Gary Ramella
3912 Bergen Turnpike
Union City, NJ 07087
gramella@union-city.k12.nj.us
www.union-city.k12.nj.us
     The combination of desperately needed curriculum
     reform in the Union City School District and and Bell
     Atlantic's willingness to provide the schools with
     multimedia on-demand interactive applications resulted
     in one of the most successful and talked-about
     public/private educational technology partnerships.
     The report referred to in this document, "Union City
     Interactive MultiMedia Education Test Trial," may be
     found at www.edc.org/CCT/ccthome/tech_rept/CCTR3.

United Neighborhood Houses of New York, Inc. (UNH)
Michael Roberts, Director, Information Technology Initiative
70 West 36th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10018-8007
Tel: 212.967.0322
Fax: 212.967.0792
mroberts@unhny.org
www.unhny.org/unh/iti.html
     UNH began its Information Technology Initiative in
     order to accomplish two goals: to consolidate
     recordkeeping among settlement house programs so that
     case workers can spend more of their time with their
     clients; and to provide "safe, supportive, friendly
     telecommunications-based resources for community use."
     Since that time, UNH has facilitated the introduction
     of computers and educational software to a countless
     number of community members, and more than 29
     settlement house programs have integrated computers
     into their services.

Virtually Wired
Coralee Whitcomb, Founder
19 Temple Place
Boston, MA 02111
Tel: 617.542.5555
info@vw.org
www.vw.org
     Virtually Wired, a community access center in downtown
     Boston, provides services such as computer training
     and web classes.

West Oakland Housing
Oakland, CA
     The city of Oakland, in partnership with IBM and
     Bridge West Oakland Housing, Inc., began a $1.2
     million project to install network computers (NCs) in
     each of the 206 apartments currently being renovated.
     The project stems from a 1997 city policy to make it
     easier for public housing residents to learn critical
     job skills, and which required future public housing
     units be equipped with computers. The system is
     expected to be completed early in 1999. IBM will be
     designing and supplying the educational content.
     Articles and further information may be found at IBM
     (www.pc.ibm.com/networkstation/news/housing.html) and
     NC World
     (www.ncworldmag.com/ncworld/ncw-02-1998/
     ncw-02-ibmoakland.html), which promises to follow the
     project's progress.

Women's Economic Agenda
Project (WEAP)
Ethel Long-Scott, Director
449 Fifteenth Street, 2nd floor
Oakland, CA 94612
Tel: 510.451.7379
Fax: 510.968.8628
weap@sirius.com
www.sriconsulting.com/weap
     WEAP's Computer and Telecommunications Skills Center
     (CTSC) provides access for small women-, and
     minority-owned businesses to high-tech equipment and
     applications. The computer training program will offer
     basic, intermediate, and advanced computer training to
     prepare low-income women and minorities for good
     paying jobs and advancement to better positions.

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Resources Part III


Organizations and Agencies Working in Related Fields

American Library Association
50 E. Huron
Chicago, IL 60611
Tel: 312.944.6750 or 280.2163
Fax: 312.944.6750 or 280.3257
ala@ala.org
www.ala.org
and
ALA Office for Information Technology Policy
1301 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Suite 403
Washington, DC 20004
Tel: 202.628.8410 or 800.545.2433
www.ala.org/oitp
     Created in 1876, American Library Association members
     include school, public, academic, and research
     libraries, professional librarians, and individuals
     from across the country. ALA works "for the
     development, promotion, and improvement of library and
     information services and the profession of
     librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure
     access to information for all." In Washington, ALA has
     an office for Information Technology Policy which
     focuses on issues of telecommunications policy that
     affect libraries and library patrons, including
     universal service and first amendment issues.

Benton Foundation
Andrew Blau, Program Director
Communications Policy & Practice
1634 Eye Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006
Tel: 202.638.5770
cpp@benton.org
www.benton.org
     The Benton Foundation's Communications Policy &
     Practice Program promotes public interest values and
     noncommercial services for the National Information
     Infrastructure through research, policy analysis,
     print, video and online publishing, and outreach to
     nonprofits and foundations. Its website contains
     updates on communications policy and upcoming events;
     a forum for discussion; publications such as
     bulletins, policy briefings, and working papers; and
     links to hundreds of online communications and public
     interest resources.

Center for Media Education (CME)
Jeffrey Chester, Executive Director
1511 K Street, NW, Suite 518
Washington, DC 20005
Tel: 202.628.2620
Fax: 202.628.2554
cme@cme.org
www.cme.org
     CME studies and advocates for
     the development of public interest telecommunications
     policy. It focuses primarily on children's needs in
     the nation's media environment. CME works with
     national and state advocates from the library,
     education,
     and media community to provide increased access for
     at-risk children and their families. Its 1997 report,
     "Connecting C hildren to the Future: A
     Telecommunications Policy Guide for Child Advocates,"
     helps child advocates understand the importance of
     promoting state and federal policies that support
     equitable access to and use of new information
     technologies, and the linkages between issues they
     care about and the developing information
     infrastructure.

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
451 Seventh Street, SW
Washington, DC 20410
www.hud.gov
     The Department of Housing and Urban Development is the
     Federal agency responsible for national policy and
     programs that address America's housing needs, that
     improve and develop the nation's communities, and
     enforce fair housing laws. One of their many programs,
     Neighborhood Networks, encourages property owners,
     managers, and residents of HUD-insured and -assisted
     housing to form teams to develop computer centers
     where residents can learn job skills and become more
     economically self-reliant.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
1919 M Street, NW
Washington, DC 20554
Tel: 202.418.0200
www.fcc.gov
     The FCC is an independent government agency
     responsible for regulating interstate and
     international communications by radio, television,
     wire, satellite, and cable. It also maintains an
     extensive website with universal service proposals,
     calendars for hearings and decisions on regulations,
     and instructions for how to file comments in FCC
     proceedings. The site also has data on phone
     subscribership and policies to make phone service more
     affordable.

National Community Building Network
672 13th Street
Oakland, CA 94612
Tel: 510.893.2404
Fax: 510.893.6657
network@ncbn.org
www.ncbn.org
     The National Community Building Network is an alliance
     of locally driven urban initiatives working to reduce
     poverty and create social and economic opportunity
     through comprehensive community-building strategies,
     including their publication, "Community Builders Guide
     To Telecommunications Technology." Their website
     provides daily headlines and policy updates of
     particular concern to those working to improve their
     communities.

National Consumer Law Center
18 Tremont Street, Suite 400
Boston, MA 02108
Tel: 617.523.8010
Fax: 617.523.7398
consumerlaw@nclc.org
www.consumerlaw.org
     The National Urban Law Center provides support on
     issues involving consumer fraud, debt collection,
     consumer finance law, energy assistance programs, and
     sustainable home ownership programs. The Center
     addresses legal problems faced daily by low-income and
     financially distressed families ranging from
     repossessions, debt collection abuses, home
     improvement frauds, usury, and bankruptcy to utility
     terminations, fuel assistance benefit programs,
     utility rate structures, and utility deregulation.

National Foundation for the Improvement of Education (NFIE)
Carol Edwards, Director of Programs
1201 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202.822.7840
www.nfie.org
     Created in 1969 by the National Education Association,
     the NFIE provides grants and technical assistance to
     teachers, education support personnel, and higher
     education faculty and staff to improve student
     learning in the nation's public schools. NFIE is home
     to The Road Ahead program, a $3 million program to
     support the use of communications technology in the
     classroom, funded by proceeds from Microsoft Chairman
     and CEO Bill Gates' book by the same name.

United States Department of Education
United States Department of Education Technology Initiatives
www.ed.gov or
www.ed.gov/Technology
     The United States Department of Education website is a
     good source of information on Universal Service
     proposals, statistics on the percent of schools
     connected to the Internet, and examples of schools
     with comprehensive technology programs. The site also
     details the Administration's funding programs and
     policies on educational technology.

U.S. Office of Technology Assessment
Superintendent of Documents
Government Printing Office
PO Box 371954
Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7974
Tel: 202.512-1800
Fax: 202.512-2250
www.gpo.gov/ota
     The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), which for
     23 years had advised Congress on technology issues,
     closed its doors September 29, 1995 after the 104th
     Congress voted to withdraw funding. Its website, which
     contains a number of dated but still excellent
     reports, can now be found at Princeton University's
     Woodrow Wilson School (www.wws.princeton.edu:80/~ota).
     Printed copies of past OTA reports are available from
     the Superintendent of Documents at the Government
     Printing Office.

Urban Libraries Council
Joey Rodger, President
1603 Orrington Avenue, Suite 1080 Evanston IL 60201
Tel: 847.866.9999
www.clpgh.org/ulc
     The Urban Libraries Council comprises over 100 large
     public libraries and the corporations that work with
     them. Its members serve more than half the public
     library patrons in the country. Among its focal areas
     are promoting urban libraries as urban assets and
     supporting their members' efforts to serve urban
     youth.

Research Organizations

Baruch College Harris
Survey Unit
David Birdsell, Associate Professor
City University of New York
School of Public Affairs, F-2021
17 Lexington Avenue

New York, NY 10010
Voice: 212.802.5957
Fax: 212.802.5968
David_Birdsell@baruch.cuny.edu
www.baruch.cuny.edu

     The Baruch College Survey Unit is a multidisciplinary
     team of scholars and practitioners at the School of
     Public Affairs. Since its inception in January 1994,
     the Unit has asked timely questions and supplied
     timely answers to government, nonprofit, and business
     policymakers with detailed opinion research and
     technical analysis and advice on a broad range of
     programmatic and policy concerns.

Computer Intelligence (formerly ZD Market Intelligence)
Ziff Davis, Inc.
3344 N. Torrey Pines Court
La Jolla, CA 92037
Tel: 619.450.1667
Fax: 619.452.6857
www.ci.zd.com
     Computer Intelligence is a source of fact-based
     information on computer and communications industry
     trends, product developments, and buyer activity.

Economic Policy Institute
PO Box 383080
Cambridge, MA 02238
Tel: 617.547.2950
query@epn.org
www.epinet.org
     The Economic Policy Institute is a nonprofit,
     nonpartisan think tank that publishes reports to
     broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve
     a prosperous and fair economy.

Educational Development Center (EDC)/Center for Children and
Technology (CCT)
96 Morton Street
New York, NY 10014
Tel: 212.807.4200
Fax: 212.633.8804
www.edc.org
     EDC conducts research on how different groups in
     society perceive and use technology. One of its
     projects, "Access By Design," develops approaches to
     increase access for under-represented groups, proposes
     ways to make technology more inclusive, and crafts a
     national agenda to promote equity and diversity in
     technology policy and practice. This project is a
     collaboration between EDC's CCT and the American
     Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Educational Testing Service
Rosedale Road
Mailstop 04-R
Princeton, NJ 08541
Tel: 609.921.9000
Fax: 609.734.5410
etsinfo@ets.org
www.ets.org
     In addition to being the source of all those
     educational tests we had to take in school (SAT, AP,
     GRE, ad infinitum), ETS also conducts research about
     trends in education, including education technology.

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
www.nces.ed.gov
     NCES is the arm of the U.S. Department of Education
     that collects statistics and publishes reports about
     the state of U.S. education. The website is an
     excellent resource for current data about technology
     use in schools and related demographics.

Nielsen Media Research
299 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Tel: 212.708.7500
Fax: 212.708.7795
www.nielsenmedia.com
     Nielsen Media Research conducts research and publishes
     statistics and demographics about computer ownership
     and Internet access and usage, including their Fall
     1997 CommerceNet/Nielsen Media Research Landmark
     Internet Demographics Study (see the previously listed
     "Surveys and Statistics,").

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
1150 18th Street, NW, Suite 975
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202.293.3126
www.people-press.org
     Originally a project of Times Mirror (1990-1995) and
     now sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Center
     conducts public opinion research pertaining to media
     and public policy.

Project 2000
Thomas P. Novak
Donna L. Hoffman
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37203
www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu
     Project 2000 is a research center at Vanderbilt
     University devoted to studying the commercialization
     of emerging media.

Quality Education Data (QED)
1700 Lincoln Street, Suite 3600
Denver, CO 80203
Tel: 800.525.5811
Fax: 303.860.0238
www.qeddata.com
     While focused on helping corporations better
     understand the education market, this research
     company's data is very revealing, especially in terms
     of how much money schools spend on technology.

Thomas Rivera Policy Institute
241 East Eleventh Steet
Steele Hall, Third Floor
Scripps College
Claremont, CA 91711-6194
Tel: 909.621.8897
Fax: 909.621.8898
trc@cgs.edu
www.cgs.edu/inst/trc.html
     The Institute conducts research and publishes reports
     about issues concerning the nation's Latino
     communities, including studies about computer
     ownership and Internet access by Hispanics.

State Utility Commissioners and Public Advocates
     Many of the policy issues described in this report
     will play out at the state level. Advocates who wish
     to get involved should contact the following
     organizations to identify state regulators and
     consumer advocates.

National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC)
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Suite 603
PO Box 684
Washington, DC 20044-0684
Tel: 202.898.2200
Fax: 202.898.2213
www.naruc.org
     In addition to educating its members (state utility
     commissioners) on utility regulation issues, NARUC
     also represents states in various utility proceedings
     at the federal level. The NARUC Web site links
     advocates and citizens to state utility commissioners
     who may be contacted for information about their
     state's regulatory activities or for filing
     complaints.

National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates (NASUCA)
1133 15th Street, NW
Suite 550
Washington, DC 20005
Tel: 202.727.3908
Fax: 202.727.3911
www.nasuca.org
     NASUCA is an association of 42 consumer advocate
     offices in 39 states and the District of Columbia.
     Members are designated by laws of their respective
     states to represent the interests of utility consumers
     before state and federal regulators and in the courts.

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End of Document