The Digital Divide

Captive Audiences“We’re leaving behind a third of Americans,” who cannot afford Internet access, creating a “digital divide.” As a result, some kids have to go to McDonald’s to do their homework, says Susan Crawford author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age (Yale U. Press) on Friday’s Bill Moyers & Company.

This is an issue librarians have discussed for years. Although Crawford doesn’t mention it on the show, she wrote in earlier about the role libraries play in a piece for the NYT’s “Room for Debate; Do We Still Need Libraries?”

The few public libraries that own the book are showing heavy holds. An excerpt below. The full video is on the Moyers’ site.

Comments are closed.