Digital inclusion and the internet of things: Convenience and the choice‐compulsion continuum

Abstract

AbstractThe internet of things (IoT) holds forth much promise and peril. IoT promises to increase efficiencies needed to solve wicked problems like climate change. However, IoT may also reinforce existing problems such as social inequalities long associated with the digital divide. Research about the digital divide has evolved greatly over the past few decades and this article examines recent trends in the United States (U.S.) with particular attention on digital inclusivity associated with three digital divide pillars—digital infrastructure, digital devices, and digital literacy. More specifically, recent technological and policy trajectories as they relate to convenience and to a choice versus compulsion continuum (the “three C's”), are interrogated in terms of emergent U.S. IoT policy. The ways in which advanced industrial capitalism is served by the IoT, and its cousin the Industry IoT, provide further food for thought as the world plunges forward with convenient devices that have potential for solving pressing problems such as social inequality and climate change, yet at the same time may exacerbate such problems without thoughtful policy development around all three pillars of digital inclusion.