The Digital Divide: Current and Future Research Directions - MISRC ...

previously introduced ICT innovations. The notion of a series of ICT innovations driving
the digital divide is an important one, since there is no single focal ICT, but a series of
focal ICTs, such as mainframes, PCs, the Internet, wireless technologies, etc., all of
which have served as major drivers of ICT adoption and investment at different points in
time. Indeed, there is the potential for diffusive interactions among clusters of ICT
innovations available at the same point in time, such as complementarity between access
to PCs and the Internet [see e.g., Ganley et al., 2005]. The ICT adoption cycle is
recurring in the sense that the processes of access and use start anew, with the
introduction of each new ICT innovation.
As new ICT innovations become commercially available, individuals,
organizations and countries adopt them at varying rates, leading to variations in the level
of access. Among the adopters, there is variation in the ability to use the technology to
obtain the comparative advantages the new technology provides. Accordingly, there are
two Inequality Types, one in access to the technology and the other in the ability to use
the technology, corresponding to the first order and second order digital divides,
respectively, as shown in Figure 1. Indeed, as the majority of the participants in any
social system have obtained access to a technology, the second order divide starts to
become more important than the first order divide.
The analysis of the first and second order effects of the digital divide can be
conducted at three distinct Levels of Analysis, which are the individual, organizational
and global levels. While there is an obvious aggregation effect going from one level of
analysis to a higher level, there are unique questions of interest at each level of analysis.
For example, at the individual level, one might ask how access and/or the ability to use
technology varies among different segments of a social system, and what policies one
could adopt to bridge the corresponding divides. At the organizational level, a natural
question is how do factors such as size, geographical location, industry, and ownership
status affect adoption and the ability to exploit technology in organizations. Finally, at
the global level, pertinent questions include how countries differ in access and use of
technology as a function of their wealth, education levels, infrastructure, and other socio-
economic factors.
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