Center for Latino Policy Research

Technologies that alter a nation’s infrastructure affect all sectors of society. The changes wrought by anew infrastructure ripple throughout the nation’s social, economic, and political institution and transform its culture. They erode old forms of livelihood and create new ones; they supplant preexisting notions of space and time and connect formerly disparate parts into a more integral whole. The development of a national information infrastructure is such a phenomena.

The United States today is an advanced post-industrial society in which political and economic activity is increasingly conditioned by one’s relationship to information. The development of a national information infrastructure—the so-called information superhighway—attenuates this relationship. The national information infrastructure is an economic, political, and social phenomena that ill fundamentally transform society. Since it undergirds the nation’s economic and social institutions, the development of an advanced information infrastructure will affect all sectors of the economy and all classes of society. This advanced telecommunications network will radically alter the way society functions. It will redefine the nature of work and commerce, our access to education and health services, our forms and levels of political participation, and even our notions of leisure.

The modernization of the nation’s information infrastructure thus has significant implications to Latinos. As is often the case with transformational technologies, it will infrastructure may be a force for greater economic and political integration to Latinos into society, or it may lead to increased marginalization of Latinos.