History of the word "digital divide"

The first historical newspaper database I looked at was the New York Times, and the earliest journalistic   use of this term 'digital divide' was in the year 1996 in an article titled A New Gulf In American Education, the Digital Divide. This article explains the growing digital divide within our nation by providing us with an example of two schools in the heart of the Silicon Valley in California. One is a rich, private school the other is a poor, public school only around the block from each other. The author of the article, Gary Andrew Poole, said it perfectly, "The digital divide between these schools in the heart of the Silicon Valley provides perhaps the most striking example anywhere in the nation of a widening gap-- between children who are being prepared for lives and careers in the information age, and those who may find themselves held back." The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times had nothing on the 'digital divide'. 

I searched digital divide into the three different scholarly article databases and the earliest use of the word in the ProQuest database was in 1996. The title of the article is "The Telecommunications Act of 1996: Codifying the digital divide". Project MUSE  and JStor had more recent and up to date articles on the digital divide. Nothing before 1990 really came up. Since the term 'digital divide' is a relatively new term it still has the same meaning as it always did. It hasn't been used in any other way than to explain the "digital divide" between people. It is an inequality between groups and countries in terms of access to or knowledge of the Information society, such as computers, cell phones, etc. The digital divide is a problem in today's society and there are still a lot of people without the use of technology. This gap needs to become smaller and smaller as we continue on into our future because if it doesn't, it can have huge implications on future endeavors.