Justice
How Nashville Hopes to Close the Digital Divide
Local leaders want the benefits of new fiber Internet service to extend as far as possible.
In a 1973 revision of his book Profiles of the Future, Arthur C. Clarke, the British science fiction writer, established the third of his famous three laws: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Clarke’s law is a way of understanding the modern phenomenon known as the digital divide—the gap between those with access to the tools of the digital age and those without it. Access to an endless library of GIFs may not seem like the stuff of wizards, but the ability to look up directions, apply to college or find a lawyer with a few keystrokes would have been inconceivable not long ago, and sharply divides those who possess it from those who don’t.