5.”Anyone can participate in this debate.”

That quote is from David Bohrman of CNN, which tirelessly promoted the event. Truth is, not everyone can. There’s a rarely discussed digital divide in America. In Charleston, 40 to 45 percent of the population subscribes to a high-speed Internet service, about the same as the national average. In a state where half of the primary voters are black, a study released last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that broadband use among blacks, though rising, continues to lag behind whites and English-speaking Latinos. In many parts of the country, particularly rural areas and poor inner cities, access to high-speed Internet is not the norm. In fact, less than half a mile from the Citadel, the site of last week’s debate, sits the Cooper River Courts public housing project, where owning a computer and subscribing to the Internet are considered luxuries.

Source Jose Antonio Vargas  (vargasj@washpost.com) The Washington Post

This Serves as another example where we must be careful that we not take the Internet for granted. As soon as we make the Internet a prerequisite for participation in society, we create a class strata. It comes back to “those who have forgetting about those who have not.”