When Language Becomes Infrastructure

One of the most persistent barriers to public policy is not a lack of funding, technology, or institutional capacity. It is semantic friction: the resistance that occurs when different people attach different meanings to the same words.

Semantic friction increases transaction costs. It slows collaboration. It weakens coalition building. Most importantly, it shifts public attention away from outcomes and toward debates over terminology. In policy environments where government agencies, schools, libraries, healthcare providers, workforce organizations, businesses, and community groups must work together, language itself becomes a form of infrastructure.

One useful way to understand semantic friction is through the concept of legibility.

If semantic friction describes the resistance that occurs when people interpret the same words differently, legibility describes the extent to which people share a common understanding of a system, policy, or opportunity. The two concepts are closely related. As semantic friction increases, legibility declines. As legibility declines, coordination becomes more difficult.

In this sense, semantic friction is not simply a communication problem. It is a governance problem. When stakeholders use the same words to mean different things, it becomes harder to build coalitions, align investments, evaluate outcomes, and sustain long-term action. Shared understanding becomes fragmented, even when participants broadly agree on the goals.

I first encountered the concept of legibility through the work of Jean Hardy, whose research examines how rural communities become legible to opportunities in the high-tech economy (Hardy, 2026). Hardy argues that legibility is not a passive characteristic of a place. Rather, it is an active and ongoing process through which communities make themselves visible to opportunities while retaining agency over their own development choices.

Hardy’s work builds on a broader intellectual tradition. James C. Scott originally used the concept of legibility to describe how institutions simplify complex realities into forms that can be understood and administered (Scott, 1998). More recently, Melissa M. Lee and Nan Zhang extended the concept into the study of governance, arguing that legibility represents the informational foundation that enables effective coordination and state capacity (Lee & Zhang, 2017).

Taken together, these scholars describe an evolution:

Scott focused on administrative legibility.
Lee and Zhang focused on governance legibility.
Hardy focused on community legibility.

The argument in this essay extends that progression one step further.

If administrative systems require legibility to govern, and communities require legibility to participate in economic opportunity, then public policies require legibility to sustain the coalitions necessary for implementation. When policy language becomes ambiguous, politically overloaded, or disconnected from practical outcomes, semantic friction increases and policy legibility declines.

The Digital Equity Act raises a fourth question:

Can policies themselves remain legible to the coalitions needed to sustain them?

The United States continues to face challenges related to broadband adoption, digital skills, device access, accessibility, workforce readiness, telehealth participation, and civic engagement. Those challenges did not disappear when the Digital Equity Act became politically controversial. The work remained necessary, even as the language used to describe it became contested.

The Problem Is Not the Mission

It is important to distinguish policy objectives from policy labels.

The Digital Equity Act was created to expand broadband adoption and digital inclusion. The statute defines broadband adoption as more than connectivity alone. It includes access to appropriate devices, digital skills, and secure, convenient networks (United States House of Representatives, Office of the Law Revision Counsel, 2026).

Across the country, organizations have used digital inclusion investments to solve practical problems:

Libraries help residents access online services.
Community colleges support workforce development.
Schools connect students to educational resources.
Healthcare providers expand telehealth access.
Local governments improve access to digital public services.
Community organizations help residents develop digital skills.

These are not abstract policy goals. They are practical efforts to help people participate more fully in modern society.

Yet many Americans hear the word equity and immediately associate it with broader political and cultural debates that extend far beyond broadband adoption, accessibility, digital literacy, or workforce development.

Those associations do not erase the concept’s analytical or moral value. They do, however, affect how readily a policy can be understood and supported.

In public policy, perception shapes implementation. When policy language becomes politically overloaded, legibility declines, and semantic friction increases.

A Lesson From the Courts

Recent litigation surrounding the Digital Equity Act offers an important lesson about adaptation and resilience.

In July 2026, a federal district court concluded that the statute’s racial and ethnic minority classification was unconstitutional while also determining that the provision was severable from the remainder of the law (United States District Court for the District of Columbia, 2026).

The significance of that decision extends beyond the legal questions involved.

As the Benton Institute observed, the ruling did not invalidate the entire Digital Equity Act. Instead, it affirmed that the challenged provision could be separated from the broader statutory framework while preserving the underlying program structure (Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, 2026). The decision addressed a specific legal classification; it did not resolve the broader policy questions of how digital inclusion should be measured, communicated, or sustained.

This illustrates a broader governance principle: when one component of a system becomes problematic, the answer is not always to discard the entire system. Sometimes the better response is to repair, adapt, and continue moving forward. The same principle can apply to language. If a policy label has become a source of friction, policymakers should examine whether different language might better communicate the intended outcomes without abandoning the underlying mission.

Participation Is the Real Goal

My own work through the Digital Opportunities Intelligence Network (DOIN) has increasingly centered on a simple observation: broadband is not the destination; connectivity enables participation. Infrastructure matters because it creates the conditions for individuals and communities to engage more fully in education, healthcare, employment, entrepreneurship, civic life, and community problem solving.

As I argued previously, digital opportunity can be understood as a progression:

Infrastructure → Accessible Services → Digital Literacy → Economic Participation → Skills Development → Community Capacity → Community Growth (Kronemeyer, 2025).

Viewed through this lens, digital policy is not fundamentally about technology; it is about participation.

Participation occurs across multiple domains:

Education
Workforce development
Healthcare
Entrepreneurship
Civic engagement
Community problem solving
Lifelong learning

Broadband, devices, accessibility, digital skills, and trusted local support function as enabling conditions that make participation possible.

Seen this way, the central policy question changes: instead of asking whether individuals belong to particular categories, we begin asking whether people can meaningfully participate in the opportunities available within their communities.

Toward More Legible Language

The future of digital inclusion policy may depend on adopting language that is both accurate and broadly legible.

Legibility matters because successful public policy requires durable coalitions.

Different stakeholders often approach digital inclusion from different directions:

Employers need workers with digital skills.
Educators need students connected to learning resources.
Healthcare providers need patients connected to services.
Rural communities need residents connected to opportunities.
Libraries need patrons connected to information.
Accessibility advocates need systems that work for everyone.
Economic developers need communities capable of competing in a digital economy.

Their immediate objectives differ, but their shared destination is meaningful participation and stronger community capacity. The enabling infrastructure is often the same. When stakeholders can see their own goals reflected in a policy, coalition building becomes easier; when terminology becomes an obstacle to understanding, coalition building becomes harder.

For this reason, reducing semantic friction should be viewed as a practical strategy for improving policy effectiveness.

Equity as Diagnosis, Participation as Outcome

The answer is not to erase the concept of equity. Equity remains valuable as a diagnostic tool because it helps identify where barriers exist and who experiences them. However, diagnostics and outcomes are not the same thing.

Equity helps identify barriers.
Participation helps describe outcomes.
Equity helps explain exclusion.
Participation helps explain possibility.

This distinction matters because communities often unite more easily around destinations than diagnoses. People may disagree about language, ideology, and policy frameworks, but they are far more likely to agree that people should be able to:

Learn.
Work.
Access healthcare.
Build skills.
Start businesses.
Participate in civic life.
Contribute to their communities.

Participation is ultimately the outcome digital inclusion policies seek to achieve.

A Path Forward

Congress does not need to abandon the underlying goals of the Digital Equity Act, states do not need to discard plans they have already developed, and communities do not need to dismantle partnerships that have taken years to establish. What may be needed is a reconsideration of how the work is described. Policymakers can retain equity-based measures to identify barriers while communicating the program’s public purpose through outcome-centered language: participation, access, skills, and community capacity.

The United States still needs policies that support:

Broadband adoption
Digital literacy
Accessible digital services
Workforce readiness
Community capacity development
Meaningful participation in the digital economy

The question is not whether these needs exist, but whether our vocabulary helps people recognize them.

If Scott’s original concern was whether institutions could make society legible enough to govern, contemporary research asks a different question. Can institutions, communities, and stakeholders develop enough shared understanding to coordinate action (Lee & Zhang, 2017)?

The challenge facing digital inclusion policy today is not primarily technical. Broadband networks can be built, devices can be distributed, and training programs can be delivered. The challenge is whether the language surrounding the policy remains legible to the coalition required to sustain it.

Reducing semantic friction will not solve every challenge facing digital inclusion policy, but it may be the first step toward rebuilding a shared understanding of why the work matters. The future of digital inclusion may depend less on changing the mission and more on improving the language we use to explain it.

References

Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. (2026, July 16). Court rules the Digital Equity Act’s race provision is unconstitutional, but severable. https://www.benton.org/blog/court-rules-digital-equity-acts-race-provision-unconstitutional-severable

Hardy, J. (2026). Legibility & rural development in the American high-tech economy. Information Technology for Development, 32(1), 311–332. https://doi.org/10.17705/1ITD.032114

Kronemeyer, J. F. (2025, November 10). Modeling semantics in policy evolution: A case for the Digital Accessibility and Opportunity Act. JasonKronemeyer.com. https://www.jasonkronemeyer.com/semantic%20modeling/policy/digital%20opportunities/2025/11/10/Modeling-Semantics.html

Lee, M. M., & Zhang, N. (2017). Legibility and the informational foundations of state capacity. The Journal of Politics, 79(1), 118–132. https://doi.org/10.1086/687053

National Digital Inclusion Alliance. (2026). Digital Equity Act. https://www.digitalinclusion.org/digital-equity-act/

Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. Yale University Press.

United States District Court for the District of Columbia. (2026, July 15). National Digital Inclusion Alliance v. Trump (Civil Action No. 25-3606) memorandum opinion. https://www.digitalinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026.07.15-NDIAvTrump-Memorandum-Issued-by-Court.pdf

United States House of Representatives, Office of the Law Revision Counsel. (2026). 47 U.S.C. § 1721: Definitions (Digital Equity Act of 2021). https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title47-chapter16-subchapter2&edition=prelim