Travel Planning and the Digital Divide

by David Deutsch

Recently I started my own business. Like most new business owners, I’m pretty much broke. But I have to go to San Francisco in a couple of weeks for business. So what’s a broke, self-employed, former Federal Transportation auditor to do? Why, take the bus, of course!

I’ve never been to San Francisco, so I really don’t know how to get around. One thing I do know is that I have to find the cheapest possible bus fare. Naturally, I jump online and log onto GotoBus, which finds the lowest possible bus fares. After a few clicks I find a decent rate: it’s about $80 round trip from Los Angeles Union Station to somewhere in San Francisco.

But then, at the last minute, a friend e-mails me about a Virgin flight from LAX to San Fran for about $150. So instead of taking the longer, somewhat more adventurous route, I secure a round-trip flight that will save me lots of time, while costing a bit more money.

When I get to San Francisco, I will try to navigate the city without a rental car. No problem; after booking my flight, I do a quick Google search for “San Francisco BART” (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and come up with a list of routes, stations and other websites to help me. After a few more clicks I find the BART station map to explain how the transit system works. I even discover that BART created iPhone and Android apps to help make navigating the BART system even easier. But since I don’t have a Smart Phone—you know, with that whole broke new businessman thing and all—I search for free WiFi hot spots near where my bus will stop, so I can use my laptop and fill in any gaps I need.

Since the BART does not stop everywhere, I also need bus route information. I have a hard time finding that info on the BART website, so I Google “San Francisco bus” and find a bunch of websites, including this one. Finally, I need to find a place to stay. It is quite simple to find the cheapest hotels in the area: I just go to Priceline or Hotwire, punch in the data I want, sort by price and select my hotel. Then I need to find the best way to get to these hotels. I can even check out Yelp for the best places to chow down while there.

Finally, I update my Facebook status to let my 580 contacts know I am going to San Fran and need some local knowledge. In total, it takes no more than 30 minutes to gather all the information I need to plan and execute my trip.

How lucky I am to fall on the right side of the digital divide, because not everyone has the luxury of planning a trip in this way.

According to a July 2008 Pew Internet & American Life report, “55% of adult Americans have broadband Internet connections at home, up from 47% who had high-speed access at home last year at this time [in the previous year]”. The 8% increase suggests that the digital divide is decreasing, even though low-income Americans’ broadband connections decreased by 3%.

Assuming there has been a steady increase in the number of people who can get online, let’s assume that 60% of Americans are currently connected to the Internet. That means that nearlyone out of every two Americans cannot access information online. And without being able to connect online, a significant portion of the U.S. population cannot fully engage in our increasingly interconnected planet.

To some extent, I can imagine what it must be like to be on the wrong side of that divide. Some years ago, I drove from Baltimore to Montreal with three friends in the back of a two-door Honda Civic. (Quick autobiographical note: I’m 6'3" and weigh over 200 pounds.) While we were sitting in our freezing cold Montreal hotel room one evening, the Academy Awards came on. The female friends I traveled with were giddy about the awards. They could have cared less about who was going to win; their only interest was watching how people dressed. I was truly and honestly astonished (and I’m not trying to be a counterculture urban hipster); I sincerely had no idea that watching how others dressed crossed people’s minds. In the years since this revelation, I discovered how entire industries were dedicated to fashion. That people know what is going to be “in” next season baffles me to this day. Fashion is a world shrouded in mist and mystery to me, and even though I know it’s out there, it remains out of my reach, just over the next ridge, beyond my sight.

This is what it must feel like to be on the wrong side of the digital divide. Putting myself in other peoples’ shoes for a moment, I could imagine hearing about “websites,” “Facebook” and “e-mail” and having no context to understand them or see why they are important, much less have the correct tools to find this mysterious online world. Even if the disconnected masses could buy a computer, they probably would have no idea how to connect to the Internet.

Some might respond by saying that people have gone around for thousands of years without the Internet and gotten along just fine, so what’s the big deal? Much like the idiotic comments made by would-be U.S. Senator Rand Paul about the Civil Rights Act, this cynical argument comes from folks who are online and reap the Internet’s enormous benefits. (Many who are not online might make the same argument, but that argument comes from ignorance of the benefits of being online.) Those who are not online simply cannot possibly excel in the current age; there is too much competition from those who are connected via the Internet. All things equal, it is not a stretch to say that having access to online information is better than not.

My example about planning a trip online illustrates a much larger point: those of us who are connected to the Internet have a much easier time finding the best information about nearly everything. Those who do not have said access simply cannot realize these benefits. And that is a real shame in the richest country in the world.

With any luck, one day our country will feature national wireless Internet access. Sure I’m naive, but at least I mean well.

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