1. How does information technology affect socioeconomic disparities? Explain your answer. There may be only 11 players on the pitch during a match, but the Blackburn Rovers Football Club in the UK employs more than 800 people. As with any modern organization, computers are at the heart of running an efficient business. Most of the club’s computers are housed with the administration department at the Ewood Park office, but others can be found at the club’s training center and soccer academy.

The club decided to install a software product called Spector 360, which it obtained from the Manchester-based company Snapguard. According to Snapguard’s sales literature, the product enables company-

wide monitoring of employee PC and Internet usage. Previously, the club had tried to introduce an acceptable use policy (AUP), but initial discussions with employees stalled, and the policy was never implemented. Early trials of Spector 360 showed that some employees were abusing the easygoing nature of the workplace to spend most of their day surfing the Web, using social networking sites, and taking up a huge amount of bandwidth for downloads.