Google and the Digital Divide

Preface

Technologies are often developed in response to the agendas of powerful social actors. Initially, they shape themselves to the contours of custom; ultimately, they follow paths selected through struggles among groups seeking to turn technologies to their own interests. (DiMaggio et al., 2001: 327 on McGuire and Granovetter, 1998)

One of the current concerns of socially informed studies of the internet is to understand the reasons for the so-called digital divide and to assess its implications for everyday life. In this sense, the internet, which is an almost unlimited and expanding information source, increasingly becomes a useful and powerful instrument for the acquisition of knowledge, and such knowledge brings social, political ...