When Digital Systems Reinforce Inequality

When I think about digital equity in Michigan, I do not just think about broadband maps or funding programs. I think about networks.

In network theory, there is a simple idea known as the “rich get richer” effect: systems tend to reward the nodes that already have the most connections, resources, or capacity. Over time, those nodes become stronger, more connected, and more influential. The same pattern is showing up in digital infrastructure and public services.

A recent study on digitalization in Chile found that wealthier municipalities consistently offer more digital services, and that the difference is driven primarily by existing economic capacity.1

Even in a country with 94% internet access and 89% of government services available online, the system still produced unequal outcomes.

That is the central lesson: digital systems do not automatically level the playing field. They can reinforce existing patterns of advantage.

Why This Matters for Michigan

This is the challenge Michigan faces.

The work I am describing here sits at the intersection of two efforts that have become increasingly important to me: Project Compass and the Digital Opportunity Intelligence Network, or DOIN. Project Compass is a Merit Network initiative that helps frame digital equity work in terms of opportunity, capacity, and place-based decision-making. DOIN, by contrast, is the knowledge network model I am developing to help operationalize that thinking. It brings together data, place, and local experience so that communities can make better decisions about where to invest, how to organize, and how to build durable pathways from access to meaningful use. In that sense, DOIN is less about technology for its own sake and more about helping communities build the conditions under which technology can produce real value.

Through Project Compass and DOIN, I have been working to move beyond connectivity as the endpoint and toward something more meaningful: digital opportunity. Through EUPConnect, we have seen how rural and under-resourced communities often depend more heavily on digital systems while having less capacity to benefit from them. Together, these efforts help communities turn access into participation and outcomes.

The Chile research helps clarify something important: the network is not the only issue. The real question is how value flows through the network.

From Access to Opportunity

If we do nothing, digital systems will behave as network theory predicts. Resources will cluster in already-strong places. Services will follow capacity. Inequality will deepen.1

But the study also points to something hopeful. People in disadvantaged areas often engage more digitally when systems are designed around real needs. That means we can reshape the network—not by changing the technology alone, but by changing how we design and deploy it.

In Michigan, that means moving from a one-size-fits-all model to a more place-based approach. It means building not just infrastructure, but the local capacity to use it well.

A Michigan Opportunity

For me, this is where Compass, EUPConnect, and DOIN align. Together, they point toward a shift:

  • from infrastructure to outcomes
  • from access to opportunity
  • from uniform deployment to place-based design

The same fiber line running through two communities can produce very different futures. And as the Chile study reminds us, place matters most for the people who need digital opportunity the most.1

This is the work ahead of us in Michigan: not simply building the network, but ensuring that it works for every community it touches.

References

Further Reading

If this topic resonates, these posts may be useful next steps:

  1. Fierro, P., Helsper, E. J., Correa, T., & Dodel, M. (2026). Place matters for the poor: Digitisation and spatial inequality in Chile. Telecommunications Policy, 50(5), 103188. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2026.103188 ↩ ↩2 ↩3