by Robert J. Samuelson

About the author: Robert J. Samuelson is a contributing editor for Newsweek.

Perhaps within a decade, most Americans will have an e-mail address, just as most now have phone numbers. The computer will become (as it is already becoming) a democratic appliance that will increasingly resemble the kitchen stove. Almost everyone has a stove. But some of us make hamburgers, and others make fettuccini. Computers are the same; they reveal differences more than create them. Once this becomes clear, the idea of cyber inequality will implode.

The Prevailing Theory of Computers and Inequality

Cyber inequality is the notion that computers are helping splinter America economically. They seem one explanation for the sharp increase of wage inequality. Consider this oft-cited comparison: in 1979 a recent male college graduate earned about 30 percent more than his high-school counterpart; by...