Arming low-income Americans with the tools of the digital age

Twelve percent of Seattle residents live below the poverty line — a number that climbs among the city's nonwhite citizens, young adults and kids.

Nearly 150,000 full-time workers in the region — one in every eight working adults — live on income no more than twice the poverty level, meaning 300,000 people in a prosperous area known for innovation are members of families that could be described as the working poor.

What do those numbers have to do with media? Today's class differences are not only about money. They are also about information.

Take, for example, the proliferation of check-cashing storefronts in poor urban neighborhoods. A quick search of the Yellow Pages finds more than 500 such outlets in the Seattle region. Their rise is not just a reflection of the need for quick cash. It means information about banking and its benefits has not reached enough people.

Access to information is about social connections. The basic facts about something as key to most of our lives as a bank account are handed down from our parents, gathered from social networks that include professionals, like accountants, and reinforced every time we enter a bank and ask for help. But imagine what you might think about banking if your parents had never held an account.

Technology has created a unique opportunity to challenge these patterns. These innovations — broadband in particular — have the power to connect people to each other and to resources in a way that makes problems of time and distance (the government office across town that closes at 5 p.m., for example) less relevant.

But, we have to apply it. To date, our national policies have been timid and America is falling behind as a result. There is some debate about the meaning of the rankings of broadband speed and penetration, but it is fair to say that the United States is not leading the world in bringing 21st-century tools to its citizens.

Today, 70 percent of Americans use the Internet regularly. But, data collected by the Pew Internet and American Life Project show that those figures are much lower for older Americans, people with low incomes and African Americans. Only 49 percent of Americans with incomes less than $30,000 are online.

Many of those non-Internet users believe that there are good reasons for not being online. Their fears include information overload and a belief that the online world is a dangerous place with inappropriate or irrelevant content. Though there is some truth behind the worries, that only makes the task of creating access to culturally relevant and socially responsible online content all the more important.

The steps needed to make these innovations available to everyone are ambitious, but achievable.

Many low-income people live in affordable housing subsidized by federal and state governments. The president should issue an executive order directing the Department of Housing and Urban Development to mandate the inclusion of high-speed Internet in new and refurbished public housing units, and promote and permit the inclusion of broadband as an operating expense. Doing so would be a first step to helping low-income people gain the tools to achieve economic self-sufficiency and participate in the modern work force.

Getting people online is, of course, only a first step. What will they see when they get there? When users and providers generate local, engaging, culturally diverse and socially relevant multimedia content that reaches people at all literacy levels, the Web has the power to be a resource on the things that matter most. And, those tools can be available in the comfort of the home, reachable on any schedule.

The impact of bringing the tools of the digital age to low-income people will be measured throughout our society — including in dollars and cents. Armed with online resources about everything from writing a check to investing and saving, families who have this better information about money and banking will be on the road to the economic mainstream. The same is true for information about education, health and other important topics.

The end result is a community of better-informed and better-connected citizens with the power to make better decisions — achievable goals through today's technology, if we put the tools to work.

Rey Ramsey is the chief executive officer of One Economy Corporation, a global nonprofit organization working to deliver technology and information to low-income people. Its online content includes www.beehiveseattle.org, a self-help Web portal.