ABSTRACT
The digital divide has become embroiled in discussions about technologies that range well beyond those earliest circumstances related to computer access and use, where the term first cropped up. Caught between a public discourse that espouses equality in opportunity as well as the tremendous bounty at the end of the technological rainbow and another that celebrates a marketplace distribution of technologies and services, US policy around the digital divide has waffled between unsystematic efforts to provide access to technology and to cultivate technological capabilities, and a trenchant affirmation in the ability of the market to provide the best array and distribution of technological resources.
