Not Just Closing a Divide, but Leaping It

For Dennis, the issue is not access to a computer: he shares a reasonably powerful, though crash-prone, home PC with his mother and his 14-year-old brother. But at home he does not have the microprocessing power, expensive programs and occasional help required to work on his games and related projects. For that he goes a few blocks from his high school to the Albuquerque clubhouse, which operators say about 25 young people visit on a typical weekday.
"The clubhouse gives you a lot of freedom to see what you really want to do and gives you the tools to create it," Dennis said. "I always wanted to make a video game, but never had the software to make it. I didn't know where to start."
The clubhouse network, which extends to such countries as Ireland, Israel, India, Germany, the Netherlands and the Philippines, has a $32 million commitment from Intel through 2005, in addition to hardware, software and services donated by technology companies including Adobe Systems, Macromedia, Hewlett-Packard and Autodesk.
Such private-sector efforts may be all the more important if federal initiatives aimed at closing the digital divide are indeed cut back. But even those who agree that a divide exists do not necessarily agree on how to go about eliminating it.