Recommendations and Potential Solutions As MIT Professor Daron Acemoglu stated, “Technology is what we create with our collective knowledge, and the technological choices we make can have huge distributional consequences[.]”70 Piecemeal public policy responses to known broadband deficiencies have been costly for the most disadvantaged households and overlooked communities. Those who are the last line to have reliable access to technology are the least likely to get into the laboratories where technology is made or the fora where public policies are born. The digital divide is a manmade construct almost 30 years in the making that is becoming more and more complex. It will take time, varied investments, and unconventional thinking to unseat exclusionary practices that allowed digital inequality to bloom. Regulatory interventions could provide lasting remedies if focused on consumers and aimed squarely at ubiquitous connectivity for every person in the U.S.
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Hearing on Automation and Economic Disparity, Before the House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, 117 Cong, (2021) (Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), https://fairgrowth.house.gov/sites/democrats.fairgrowth.house. gov/files/documents/Acemoglu%20Testimony.pdf.
The Economic Consequences and Generational Impact of the Digital Divide
