[ecrea] New book - Inequity in the Technopolis: Race, Class, Gender, and the Digital Divide in Austin

*Inequity in the Technopolis: Race, Class, Gender, and the Digital 
Divide in Austin
*Edited by Joseph Straubhaar, Jeremiah Spence, Zeynep Tufekci, and 
Roberta G. Lentz
_http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exstrine.html
_
Over the past few decades, Austin, Texas, has made a concerted effort to 
develop into a "technopolis," becoming home to companies such as Dell 
and numerous start-ups in the 1990s. It has been a model for other 
cities across the nation that wish to become high-tech centers while 
still retaining the livability to attract residents. Nevertheless, this 
expansion and boom left poorer residents behind, many of them African 
American or Latino, despite local and federal efforts to increase 
lower-income and minority access to technology.

This book was born of a ten-year longitudinal study of the digital 
divide in Austin---a study that gradually evolved into a broader inquiry 
into Austin's history as a segregated city, its turn toward becoming a 
technopolis, what the city and various groups did to address the digital 
divide, and how the most disadvantaged groups and individuals were 
affected by those programs.

The editors examine the impact of national and statewide digital 
inclusion programs created in the 1990s, as well as what happened when 
those programs were gradually cut back by conservative administrations 
after 2000. They also examine how the city of Austin persisted in its 
own efforts for digital inclusion by working with its public libraries 
and a number of local nonprofits, and the positive impact those programs 
had.

   * Joseph Straubhaar is the Amon G. Carter Sr., Centennial Professor
     of Communication in the Radio-Television-Film Department at the
     University of Texas at Austin.
   * Jeremiah Spence is a Ph.D. candidate in the Radio-Television-Film
     Department at the University of Texas at Austin.
   * Zeynep Tufekci is an Assistant Professor in the School of
     Information and Library Science with an affiliate appointment in
     the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina,
     Chapel Hill.
   * Roberta G. Lentz is an Assistant Professor in Media and
     Communications in the Department of Art History and Communication
     Studies at McGill University.