While the panelists and presenters will have an opportunity to discuss challenges and solutions, your participation is also critical. I therefore encourage you to ask questions of your presenters, challenge their assumptions, and engage them and your fellow attendees in this important dialogue. Our guess, and our hope, is that you'll find some of these conversations among the most valuable part of your participation. There are so many ways to connect now - through a commercial Internet Service Provider, through cable modem, or through wireless. We can connect at the office, at school, through a community organization, in libraries, or in cyber-cafes.
Choices are there for the consumer.
Yet, in spite of all the new ways and sources of connection, we still have a digital divide. We still have a country where there are many people who can't get on-line. We need to make them in the Information Revolution. NTIA, back in 1994, released one of the first comprehensive measures of national connectivity in a report called Falling Through the Net . We found that, while more Americans have become connected to the Information Superhighway, some segments of our society are purchasing and using computers more than others.