Karen Mossberger is the Frank and June Sackton Professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University, and director of the Center on Technology, Data and Society. Her research includes digital inequality, digital government, and impacts of technology use, for individuals and communities. In other work she has examined issues in urban policy, local governance, and policy innovation. Her co-authored and edited books on technology include Digital Cities: The Internet and the Geography of Opportunity, Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide, and Transforming Everything? Evaluating Broadband's Impacts Across Policy Areas (Oxford 2021). She is an elected fellow in the National Academy of Public Administration.
Caroline J. Tolbert is the Lowell Battershell University Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa. Her work is driven by a theoretical and normative interest in strengthening American democracy and fostering inclusive economic growth. Her research and teaching weaves together a concern with diversity and inequality, elections and representation, technology policy and local economic development, subnational politics and policy, and data science. She is the coauthor of Accessible Elections: How the States can Help Americans Vote (Oxford, 2020). She has co-authored three books on the internet and politics/policy, including Digital Cities: The Internet and the Geography of Opportunity, Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, and Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, and numerous private foundations.
Scott J. LaCombe is an Assistant Professor of Government and Statistical and Data Sciences at Smith College. His research focuses on public policy and the politics of US states. He particularly focuses on the spread of public policies across US states and how these adoption decisions are structured by state political institutions. His research also focuses on using big data to answer questions about subnational governments, and he is part of several projects to collect data on tens of thousands of state policy adoptions including the State Policy Innovation and Diffusion Dataset, and he has published in Policy Studies Journal, Political Research Quarterly, and State Politics and Policy Quarterly.

• Chapter 1: Innovation and Inequality: Two Narratives of Place


• Chapter 2: Counties: Broadband Use and Prosperity Across Diverse Contexts


• Chapter 3: Metros: Does Broadband Promote Growing and Prosperous Regions?


• Chapter 4: Metros: Smart Cities and Neighborhoods


• Chapter 5: States: The Innovative Environment


• Chapter 6: Choosing the Future: Digital Human Capital and Inclusive Innovation


• References

While previous studies have examined the impacts of broadband infrastructure, they have indicated little about the extent to which local populations can afford and use the technology. Moreover, there has been limited scientific evidence on how broadband adoption matters for collective benefits. Including new data on broadband subscriptions from 2000-2017, and comprehensive analysis for U.S. states, counties, metros, cities, and neighborhoods, Choosing the Future argues that broadband use in the population is a form of digital human capital that benefits communities as well as individuals.