Redlining the Information Superhighway : Computers: California can take the lead in making electronic communications an equal-opportunity technology.

The technological revolution represented by the “information superhighway” is also a massive sociological experiment--a high-tech civil-rights test--that will determine who can and cannot afford this technology, mastery of which has become a critical rite of passage to today’s professional ranks.

The information superhighway--formally the National Information Infrastructure, a rapidly expanding network of information-delivery systems linked by computer and phone or coaxial cable--threatens to completely bypass whole communities that cannot afford the service, the hardware, the training or the time to invest in it. The result will be a kind of electronic redlining, leaving low-income communities and minorities behind.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass), ranking minority member of the House subcommittee on telecommunications, calls this prospect “information apartheid.” Just as the Kerner Commission reported on race relations in the mid-1960s, we are standing on the threshold of two technologically separate societies. One will be driven by increased utilization computer networks, the other shaped by lack of access, with a further increase in unemployment and dead-end service jobs. The “best and the brightest” will be skimmed off as an information elite.

One proponent of increased utilization of computers for all economic classes is House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a “Third Wave” disciple who has floated the idea for tax incentives for low-income families for purchase of laptop computers. This is a Band-Aid approach to a larger social dilemma.

The use of the new information technology for delivery of services has occurred to the federal government. Last May, the Office of Technology Assessment forecast the use of “computers, advanced telecommunications, optical disks and the like” for service “to 46 million recipients of Social Security benefits, 27 million recipients of food stamps, etc.” There was no question raised about how food-stamp recipients would pay for such on-line service, other than with food stamps.

These are the people who are missing from the glowing headlines about the coming electronic renaissance, and these are the people that we could be helping to gain technological literacy. While California is on track to become the world’s leading innovator in telecommunications--between Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the development of fiber-optic technology --state officials remain blind to the growing sectors of society that are functionally illiterate, grossly underemployed and lack the basic skills to compete in a world driven by electronic communications.

It wasn’t long ago that California was the envy of the nation, with the best educational system and infrastructure and the lowest unemployment rates. Today we are struggling, with our schools at the bottom ranks in national percentiles and our infrastructure crumbling. As the state economy recovers, California could foster an “information justice” movement, guaranteeing access for all to the emerging technology. Our state should embrace community access and contribute resources from such diverse funds as the Petroleum Violators Escrow Account, the California Pollution Control Finance Authority and the general fund to initiate a broad educational campaign. We should convert our many rundown or closed libraries into community information hubs. The private sector should lend managers and executives to these community hubs to train a cadre of trainers who could train users.

Major polluters in the South Coast Basin could participate as a more cost-effective means of pollution control. By training people to become telecommuters or home workers, industry would be saving millions of dollars by getting people off the road, improving air quality and avoiding more costly pollution-control methods.

The information superhighway is not only necessary to an improved quality of life for Californians; it should be used as a social catapult to improve the quality of life for all. Before information redlining becomes a barrier to equal opportunity, we can do a great deal to guarantee a competitive, multicultural California work force.