Bharat Mehra defines it simply as “the troubling gap between those who use computers and the internet and those who do not”.
The term initially referred to gaps in the ownership of, or regular access to, a computer. As Internet access came to be seen as a central aspect of computing, the term's usage shifted to encompass gaps in not just computers but also access to the Internet. Recently, some have used the term to refer to gaps in broadband network access. The term can mean not only unequal access to computer hardware, but also inequalities between groups of people in the ability to use information technology fully.
