This chapter analyzes the rapid diffusion of the Internet across the United States over the past decade for both households and firms. We put the Internet’s diffusion into the context of economic diffusion theory where we consider costs and benefits on the demand and supply side. We also discuss several pictures of the Internet’s current physical presence using some of the main techniques for I...

T last half of the twentieth century was marked by steady advance in the ubiquity of information and communication technologies (ICTs) throughout the industrialized world. The emergence of a significant “digital divide” between industrialized and developing countries is reproducing existing patterns of inequality with regard to these new technologies (Castells, 1996). During this same period, h...

Adults routinely use the Internet as a source of health information. Patients with bipolar disorder and caregivers should be encouraged to increase their knowledge of this complex illness, including through the Internet. However, patients, caregivers, and physicians should be aware of potential perils when searching the Internet for health information, including loss of privacy, quality of web ...

Mobile phones are a crucial mode of communication and welfare enhancement in poor countries, especially those lacking an infrastructure of fixed lines. In recent years much has been written about how mobile telephony in Africa is rapidly reducing the digital divide with developed countries. Yet, when one examines the evidence it is not at all clear what is really happening. In one country, Tanz...

BACKGROUND Use of the Internet for health information continues to grow rapidly, but its impact on health care is unclear. Concerns include whether patients' access to large volumes of information will improve their health; whether the variable quality of the information will have a deleterious effect; the effect on health disparities; and whether the physician-patient relationship will be impr...

This paper presents a comparative study on digital divide between a region and its main metropolitan area. The exercise shows how barriers to technology access and usage may vary in terms of both nature and intensity. The paper also proposes a taxonomy of the different types of digital divides that may be present inside a region.

This paper aims at contributing to the debate about the digital divide. We first focus on what to us constitutes the root problem: the typical approaches to the development of people through and by the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). In contrast to governmental, political and technological attempts that focus almost exclusively on providing access to digital communicati...

OBJECTIVE To identify and describe advantages, challenges, and ethical considerations of web based behavioural data collection. METHODS This discussion is based on the authors' experiences in survey development and study design, respondent recruitment, and internet research, and on the experiences of others as found in the literature. RESULTS The advantages of using the world wide web to co...

The developing countries account for the majority of the world’s population, and are important for this reason alone. In addition, developing countries contain millions of people who lack access to resources such as clean water, adequate housing, and education for satisfying basic human needs. Moreover, many people in developing countries lack the freedom to make choices in their own lives (Sen...

ii Foreword These last few years have seen a surge of new initiatives devoted to reducing the digital divide. The G-8 DOT Force, the UN ICT Task Force and the World Economic Forum's work on digital inclusion are significant examples of the efforts going into promoting digital technologies for the development of poor countries. However, what is actually known about the impact of information and ...