This article uses archival materials from the Clinton administration to explore how the
“digital divide” frame was initially built. By connecting features of this frame for stratified
Internet access with concurrent poverty policy discourses, I reveal the digital divide
frame as a crucial piece of the emergent neoliberal consensus, positioning economic
transition as a natural disaster only the digitally skilled will survive. The Clinton
administration framed the digital divide as a national economic crisis and operationalized
it as a deficit of human capital and the tools to bring it to market. The deficit was to be
resolved through further competition in telecommunications markets. The result was a
hopeful understanding of “access” as the opportunity to compete in the New Economy.