Where is the real digital divide?

Is the digital divide real? Well are you talking about the U.S. digital divide or the Global Digital Divide? They are both real. But different. The U.S. digital divide is social, between classes. According to the most recent PEW Internet and American Life Project report: "One in five American adults does not use the internet. Senior citizens, those who prefer to take our interviews in Spanish rather than English, adults with less than a high school education, and those living in households earning less than $30,000 per year are the least likely adults to have internet access." Also: "The 27% of adults living with disability in the U.S. today are significantly less likely than adults without a disability to go online (54% vs. 81%). Furthermore, 2% of adults have a disability or illness that makes it more difficult or impossible for them to use the internet at all." You can download the full report at: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2000/Whos-Not-Online.aspx The Global Digital Divide is geographic, between countries. For instance, 65 percent of the world's 7 billion people are not using the internet, according to the International Telecommunications Union. (In America in 2011, nearly 96 percent of the 400 million people are using the internet.) If you want to get an unusual view of internet activity world wide check out tweetping.net at http://tweetping.net/ which give yes a real time picture of the tweeting going on globally using clusters of lights on the globe to represent usage -- so you can quickly see how dark Africa and Russia/Asia are. But if you are trying to figure out what the real digital divide is, I think you have to turn to its literal definition. As I remember it, President Bill Clinton, in his second inaugural, popularized the term, referring to the U.S. digital divide, a social issue. And now there is a growing use of the term to describe those who put or ingest contnt on the internet and those who manipulate the tools of the internet. Between those two groups there is a growing inequality. There is yet to be a term invented for the global digital divide: besides, perhaps, dreadfully sad.