ABSTRACT
As the socioeconomic landscape continues to change in the United States and globally, community and economic development paradigms and assumptions need to be updated if rural places are to effectively capitalize on the opportunities that technology poses and remove persistent barriers to equitable access to technology. During the 20th century, economic development strategies were primarily focused on population centers and were industry-focused. However, the digital age offers a host of new opportunities and challenges, particularly for rural communities. Enrico Moretti, in his book The New Geography of Jobs, argues that geographic concentration of people and density are still an almost indispensable requirement for innovation. While data seem to support this argument, they are not contextualized correctly. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated some of these trends, opening a window of opportunity. Moreover, although the digital age was already underway, the post-COVID-19 world is likely to be far more digital than the pre-COVID-19 world. There seems to be a myth that rural places are less innovative, in part because they have unequal access to the technologies of the digital age. In reality, rural communities are innovative and some argue have the same, or even greater capacity, to innovate than urban and suburban places. As sophisticated, digital age applications and mindsets expand, an enhanced capacity to innovate can be unleashed. For this to take place, however, a series of barriers need to be overcome in rural communities, which are: (1) lack of awareness on the digital age; (2) address digital parity issues (around connectivity, mindset, and skills); and (3) digital inclusion or exclusion. This chapter will discuss these barriers in an effort to identify opportunities for unleashing the true innovative potential of rural communities in this nascent digital age and taking advantage of the opportunities generated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
