Information technologies and social equity: Confronting the revolution

Under prevailing policies, serious social equity issues are arising as we move further into the Information Age. Recent surveys indicate that there is a significant gap between the “information rich” and “information poor,” but there is little up-to-date research on the magnitude, nature, and consequences of this gap. As a society we are giving inadequate attention to ensuring that as new computer and telecommunications technologies become more pervasive, their benefits are distributed in ways that don't exacerbate existing disparities between the rich and poor. The underlying issue is one of social empowerment. If “knowledge is power,” then a dominant element of our society for the rest of the century is likely to be a struggle for control of information resources and the power associated with that control. We can begin to deal with these issues by creating a system of National and Regional Institutes for Information Democracy. The Institutes would explore the nature of information-related empowerment issues, the character and causes of the “information gap,” and would develop and implement means for mitigating associated equity problems. They would serve as a development and support structure for state and community-based Experimental Mass Information Utilities, a concept developed by Harold Sackman and his co-workers in the early 1970's. The Institutes system would provide a focus for research and implementation activities designed to mitigate equity problems, and in the process, would expand information industry markets.