One of the supporting documents for the CTC grant is "Falling Through the Net II: New Data on the Digital Divide", a study sponsored by the Department of Commerce, available at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/net2. I encourage everyone to read it. This brings me to my question: what data do we have on the severity of the "Digital Divide" in Spokane?

Here at the Northeast Community Center we have user surveys from our Introduction to the Internet classes which show that the overwhelming majority of those who take the classes don't have Internet access at home or at work, but of course there's built-in sample bias in that figure. We also have the growing number of users in our Information Access Center (~250 registered at last count) to suggest the need.

Do other folks have similar data to back up this need? (Todd?) Anyone know of local studies that counted computer ownership, online access, etc.?

-- Joseph Anderson (ymt@ior.com), May 14, 1999

Answers

There is a number of growing need for the internet in this community. In fact the census did a demographics of the Northeast area with internet users, computer owners, ect. I know of three sites that do internet demographics. These sites were provided by Sharon Casewell author of the book called The Internet Using Netscape Navigator Software(New Perspective series/Course technology/ITP publishing). These sites are:

1. Georgia Tech at www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/
2. CyberAtlas at www.cyberatlas.com
3. NUA at www.nua.ie

I do see a growing numbers of users who don't have the funding to purchase/own a computer or to pay for internet access. It might be possible that the city may have more demographics on this subject. I will look into this further and see if maybe HUD(U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) has any information about the demographics in this area.

-- Todd Cooper (toddkenning@hotmail.com), May 14, 1999.