The statistics include households with home computers, Internet connectivity, and Internet usage. The information economy requires these technical skills, and those without them are increasingly condemned to low-wage jobs. Second, as more information resources and services go online, the Digital Divide becomes a fundamental issue of equality of opportunity. For example, employment and educational resources increasingly appear solely on the Internet. While most of the Digital Divide debate focuses on physical access to computing technologies, the issue is actually much broader.
Computer literacy is one dimension of the problem.
Even with physical access, people must know how to operate computers or other Internet equipment. Information literacy is another dimension of the digital divide. The ability to identify, organize, and use information is a necessary characteristic not just of the Internet economy but increasingly of the economy as a whole. Finally, the digitally disadvantaged require appropriate content in order to participate in the Internet, needing content in Spanish, for example, or other languages for the 32 million Americans who do not speak English. As the Digital Divide issue evolves, it becomes one expression of the social and economic difficulties facing segments of our population.