ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the untapped explanatory potential of the Social Construction of Technology and Social Shaping of Technology theories in developing new perspectives and broadening and deepening understandings of the rise and persistence of digital divides. It illustrates the conceptual power of theorizing digital divides in novel and intriguing ways to explicate digital social inequalities. The theory of the social shaping of technology (SST) is a companion to the ideas of the theory of the social construction of technology (SCOT) theory and explores the content of technology and the processes involved in innovation. The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recently used their 2013 dataset to model individual-level Internet use to try to explain at least part of the remaining adoption gap among Hispanics. Exhibiting an analogous but more severe pattern than that of the race and ethnicity and urban-rural divides, the disability divide has consistently continued unabated.
