Wired News has a summary of the latest Pew Research Project about the digital divide. The full Pew Report can be found here.
There are two groups of people that stand out in this survey of 3,553 Americans.

The first is low income.

While understanding the subtleties of offline populations might be helpful, the biggest reason for not getting online still comes down economics, experts said.

The East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy in Oakland, California, which has studied the boom and bust of the 1990s, found not surprisingly that the decade created many high-tech jobs. But there was also an explosion of low-pay service jobs during the same period, a trend that has played out across the country, according to Amaha Kassa, co-director of the organization.

The majority of people in these positions, including retail clerks, janitors and hotel housekeepers, are not using the Internet because they don’t have enough money for basic necessities, let alone to pay for a computer and Internet access.

Access is still difficult for people with disabilities.

Disabilities also keep some Americans from using the Internet. Almost 75 percent of disabled Americans do not go online, and 28 percent of them said their disability or impairment made it difficult or impossible to go online.

The most surprising finding wasn’t low income, disabled or the elderly, it was the internet drop outs. This is one of the findings I identify most with. If I hadn’t had generous tech support, I’d have given up a long time ago.

But another group is gaining among the offline population. Seventeen percent of people surveyed are Internet dropouts.

They were online once but were tripped up by technical problems that have kept them offline sometimes for a year or more. And 25 percent are online now but have dropped off in the past for a lengthy period of time for the same reasons, the study found.

42% of the American adults surveyed (translates to about 80 million people)
don’t bother going on line.

“Many of the people whom we talked to define themselves as people who don’t use technology,” Lenhart said. “They view themselves as high-touch versus high-tech.”

About 27 percent of Americans are completely removed from the online world, according to the study. They’ve never tried going online and aren’t surrounded by anyone else who uses the Internet.

People surveyed cited social and psychological reasons for not using the Internet. Those who feel “personally empowered” are more likely to go online, while those who feel less in control of their lives are less likely to go online, the study found.

The technological complexities aside, the social and psychological reasons are compelling. 23% of the American population have basic reading problems.

Yahoo
I’ve been noticing blog-specific searches coming from Yahoo. It appears they have updated their search engine.

This Chicago Tribune article on blogging looks at the media conglomerates suspicion of the blogosphere, and what companies are grasping the concept.

Iraq
Iraqi Christians have a great deal to fear.