ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors analyze interviews with representatives from two leading non-profit organizations to understand how non-profits, private corporations, and the government all interact to address individual-level and societal-level digital inequalities with digital reuse. Through this analysis they broaden the technology maintenance construct beyond the individual-scale to understand how non-profit organizations dedicated to reuse are reducing inequalities. The authors investigate refurbishment non-profits that circulate computers within the US as a means of reducing digital inequalities that persist even in wealthy countries. Systematically channeling government computers through non-profit reuse organizations would be another simple but important means of sourcing donations, a key barrier to refurbishing success. Technology maintenance was developed in response to the realization that low-income individuals in wealthy contexts spend a lot of time and relative income in order to stay digitally connected and that work often goes unnoticed by policy makers, the press, and even researchers.
