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T A B L E__T A L K

Netscape's source code is out. Now what? Discuss the future of the browser wars in Table Talk's Digital Culture area

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R E C E N T L Y

21st Challenge No. 8
By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau
Phony Microsoft support letters.
(04/16/98)

Let's Get This Straight
By Scott Rosenberg
For Microsoft's PR machine, "innovate or die" becomes "innovate or buy"
(04/15/98)

Let my software go!
By Andrew Leonard
Netscape was desperate for a new strategy against Microsoft. Eric Raymond had one
(04/14/98)

Consider the source
By Laura Lemay
Why Netscape's program code causes geeks to swoon
(04/13/98)

Apple and the snake
By Scott Rosenberg
Gil Amelio's peevish corporate memoir paints Steve Jobs as the devil
(04/10/98)

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BROWSE THE
21ST ARCHIVES

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__________NUMBERS ON THE "DIGITAL DIVIDE."

__________BY JANELLE BROWN | Race, gender, physical appearance: All will be democratized by the glorious, global medium of the Internet -- at least according to its own marketing hype. But while the ethnic background of your chat room correspondent may be indeterminable, it doesn't take much brainpower to recognize that minority groups in the U.S. aren't getting online as quickly as their affluent, white counterparts.

So far, there has been no concrete demographic research into race on the Web, and only some arms of government and scattered activists have devoted much energy to encouraging minority groups to get online.

That, says marketing researcher Donna Hoffman, is a big mistake. Together with her research partner Thomas Novak, Hoffman has released the first comprehensive study that looks at the numbers of American whites and blacks who use the Internet -- and tries to understand the "digital divide."

The study, which will appear in Science Magazine, is the latest research to emerge from Hoffman and Novak's Project 2000 center at Vanderbilt University. For four years, they have examined market segments on the Internet -- including race and gender -- in hope of mapping the demographics of the online population and understanding how the numbers could influence the long-term commercialization of the Web.

Using the results of a Nielsen Internet Demographic Study, which surveyed 5,813 Americans in December 1996 and January 1997, Hoffman and Novak extrapolated the numbers of African-Americans online and determined the roles of income and education in that presence. The results, says Hoffman in an interview with Salon, were both encouraging and alarming.

What did you find in your studies, and why is it significant?

We have been able to provide very solid evidence of a digital divide on the Internet. Some of the findings are rather obvious -- whites are more likely to have a computer at home, whites are more likely to use the Web and whites are more likely to have used the Web much more recently. There's really nothing surprising there. On the other hand, we've been able to document the extent of the gap and where the gap is more severe.

The other things we've found are some rather surprising, and to some extent shocking, differences that actually suggest the gap is much worse in a more insidious way. That particularly has to do with students.

White students are more than twice as likely as black students to have a computer at home, and that difference does not go away when you take income into account. That is really interesting because it suggests that African-American families are making different choices -- even at the same level of income, they are not buying PCs.

You can't say that this is because African-Americans don't want access, because we also looked at that and found that, in fact, African-Americans are actually more likely to want to get online than whites are. So it's absolutely not a question of aspirations or interest, because in fact African-Americans are more interested. Something else is operating here.

The other thing we found, which is even more disturbing, is what happens with students who don't have a PC at home. The good news is if you're a student and you have a PC at home, there's no difference between whites and African-Americans in terms of Web use. Having that computer in the house is a wonderful equalizer. But take that PC away and then look at what happens and it's shocking: There you find that when there's not a computer in the home, whites are five times more likely to find another way to use the Web at some nontraditional access point -- like a cybercafe, community center, a library, a friend or a relative's house -- than an African-American student is.

N E X T_P A G E .|. Riots over information inequality?