Discussion Paper for this week.

Digital Divide

I apologize for the tardiness--- just another example of the terrible internet connection out in the Boondocks :)

The Digital Divide. Mentioned briefly in the articles we read for this week and it was quite brilliantly described as being “about places left behind.” I never gave the digital divide too much thought, sadly I had the outlook that the internet was everywhere because it was everywhere that I had ever been. But then I moved to Dewitt, or rather I moved to the boondocks, where internet is not available, where streets aren’t plowed, and when a storm hits and takes out power we are the last to get it back. But mostly let’s focus on the internet issue.

As a person who has always had the internet and a cell phone in order to connect me with anyone and everyone at any given time, being without the internet is rather frightening. But then you get over the initial fright, which turns into annoyance. What if I want to work from home? What if I need information? Why should I have to drive all the way to town in order to get a good connection? Why did I take the internet for granted for so long?

Luckily the Federal Broadband Stimulus is working to fix this issue. Go here for more information: http://www.broadbandusa.gov/

Also mentioned in the same article is the fact that though the internet creates new ways of communicating, connecting, organizing etc, It is also creating new inequalities among people. Between those who have the internet and those who don’t and those who know how to use it and those who don’t, those who create web content and those who do not.

This also broadens the divide between those who are literate and those who are not. Those who are literate can use the internet and gain more information---those who are not literate cannot do this and therefore remain even farther divided. The informed get more informed and the ignorant remain ignorant.

Pentalk

I really found the Hagar and Haythorne article interesting because it was a practical, yet uncommon (at least for me), example of the value of technology to communities. I say uncommon because I don't often put agriculture and computing technology together in my mind. This is not to say that I view farmers as less intelligent; it's just something that I really had never thought of before. It seemed to me that Pentalk was well-organized and thought out, and it really brought two types of literacy to the affected community: literacy in computer operation and literacy about (then) current methods of disease prevention. I liked that they provided the computers on a rent or rent-to-own basis. I think it gave the farmers more of a choice, rather than just jamming literacy down their throats. It was also interesting to read about the formation of new communities not based on a shared physical space.

It then got me thinking about different ways that those types of technologies apply to my own life (excluding Facebook, Twitter, etc.). There is/used to be an emergency text message system on campus available to notify students and staff of emergencies on campus through text messages when e-mail wasn't readily accessible. Too bad I never subscribed to this service and will therefore, presumably, be unprepared in the case of an emergency situation on campus. This doesn't really bother me. Otherwise I would have subscribed already.

Back to Pentalk. What if the farmers chose not to subscribe? They could call neighboring farms owned by farmers who had subscribed to get the same information almost verbatim. The neighbor with the service could read from the Pentalk service. Just like my friend could forward an emergency text to me if he or she deemed it necessary.

Then I thought about literacy being violent. The farmers who chose to use the Pentalk system gained a new literacy that made them different from their peers. The relationship is changed because of this new literacy. Maybe resentment becomes a factor. "Why didn't you subscribe and therefore always calling me for information?" So couldn't this resentment, in turn, tear apart the physical community? Does the physical community matter now that the virtual one is in place?

As I read through the articles about community informatics, I was reminded of a series of events that took place several years ago in my old neighborhood (surprise, surprise). As I drove down Damen one day, I encountered a police roadblock. There really was nothing too unusual about this, as the cops frequently terrorized community members. In fact, just the week before, a roadblock had been set up at one of the busiest intersections. Ostensibly, it was to conduct seatbelt checks, but everyone in the neighborhood knew the real reason for the roadblock: the cops were trying to ferret out undocumented residents (more commonly referred to as “illegal aliens”) for deportation.

Anyway, on this particular day, I got angry as I was forced to sit through the backed up traffic in order to deal with Chicago’s version of the Gestapo. As I neared the front of the line, I readied to berate the cop and give him a piece of my mind. However, this time, it was a different story. The cops were handing out flyers that featured a drawing of a man who had just raped two neighborhood middle school girls. I was horrified that something so brutal had occurred just two blocks from my apartment. I was also thankful (for the first time) for the police presence on my street. On the other hand, I was still pissed off because this was the first time in two years that I had seen the cops do anything close to “serve and protect” this community. I remember saying something to the officer along the lines of: “Oh, wow. I didn’t realize you guys actually did anything good for this neighborhood. Usually you just mess with the residents. What a nice deviation from the norm. I hope you catch the guy.”

I suppose I started thinking about this in regard to Community Informatics after I read the piece “Crisis, Framing & Community.” I began thinking about how information in my neighborhood was disseminated and how we could have responded to a crisis. The official response of authorities in the incident above were problematic in several ways. First, it seemed ridiculous that the same institution that had been oppressing the people was now attempting to assist them, and the total lack of trust between the community and the police made this a difficult stretch. To me, this indicates the absolute necessity of good working relationships, which might be why Pentlak was able to assist the farmers as they did. Second, much like the farmers in the article, most of the people in my neighborhood did not own computers. In fact, most of the people in my neighborhood did not speak English. So, while the idea of handing out flyers in a neighborhood in which people were not computer literate seemed a good one, the results were not as good as they could have been because the flyers were printed in English.

Who Defines Citizenship?

I read this article about Ottawa's Indian Act and it reminded me of some of Benhabib's work:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/03/10/native-status.html#ixzz0iG8KVGMe

Language as a Tool

I guess I always knew that language could be used as a tool, but I never really thought of it until I read Cushman's book. (Odd because I am a language major.) Anyway, the ways that the members of the Quayville community used language were INCREDIBLE, and I found this book incredibly fascinating.

If you think about it, the only tool that these community members had was their knowledge of language and how it worked in gatekeeping situations. They didn't have money or a formal education to help them meet their needs and the needs of their children, so they had to develop their language skills to help them get what they wanted out of gatekeeping situations. They also used Cushman as a language tool. They used her language to their advantage. They also used her status as a Ph.D. candidate to their advantage when applying for housing - another example of their language proficiency. They knew how her status would appeal to landlords, and they knew it would offset the fact that they were receiving Section 8 to help pay for their housing.

I think a great example of this is when Disco was arrested for grand theft auto and went before a judge. Disco pleaded guilty, and Chaos thought that he could've used language skills differently to get a different outcome, so he thought that he would "help" Disco by interrupting the court proceedings to tell him that he was being, basically, an idiot. However, Disco had the language skills necessary to get out of that situation, but he wanted to stand up to authority, so he chose not to use his language skills. Lucy also had the language skills to get him out of jail. However, she wanted her son to go down a different path and she also didn't want to have to worry about him for a while, so she let him go to jail so that she could get him out of the situation. She held back and let the judge send him to jail to get what she wanted.

I think we all use language as a tool to get what we want, but in some discourses, it's not as obvious because there isn't such a huge gap between the authority and ourselves. (By we, I mean, the "we" at MSU.) One could say that professors have the power here. However, there isn't the same gap here as there is between the residents of Quayville and, say, the social workers. The professor and the student are both in an academic setting, and both are familiar with the language of academia. The professor has also been an undergrad and a grad student. So it is easier for the student and the professor to communicate because they have a shared experience. However, the social worker has probably never applied for Section 8, and the community member has probably never been to college. When there is less of a gap between the gatekeeper and the one who wishes to open the gate, the use of language as a tool is less obvious, but it is still there.

The Costs and Instituions

It seems here that Cushman makes the argument that these institutions derive their power from the ability to reuse. Ok, she doesn't say that exactly, but that is my interpretation. After reading Clay Shirkey's book, The Power of Organizing without Organizations, I have come to realize that institutions largely rely on how much capital it takes for them to operate. His basic argument is that institutions are so bureaucratic because it cost effective to be so. That only allows for so much variety. Shirkey argues that the obstacle of costs only allows for certain types of tasks and tools to be profitable. So institutions are designed to allow certain tasks and disallow others in order to operate efficiently. This mode of operation can be considered the least common denominator. When organizing a large group of something, like Welfare programs, an institution is the best plausible method since it functions at high levels efficiency at the lowest possible cost.

In the same way, the use of institutional language tools are prioritized by cost effectiveness. As when Lucy, the 42 year old African American woman with six kids, needed her daughter's birth certificate, but forgot it. The woman at the desk refused to go and get her other file across the building probably because it cost too much to do so. As in, she had other work that needed to be completed that was more important than this individual woman sitting before her (This is an optimistic interpreation).

However, this concept of institutions works both ways:

"While individuals had to be fluent in institutional language tools to gain status in this community, they could not become too immersed in the discursive convention of any one of wider society's institutions, or they would be stigmatized as 'selling out'. . ." (228).

Looking at greater American society as an institution, there are certain ways of acting that are prioritized simply because it is more cost effective to prioritize something (I'm not making the argument that they were prioritized because they were cost effective. I am making the argument that they remain prioritized because it costs too much to change). It allows for reuse and repetition; and recycling is never a bad thing. But, as we saw in last week's readings, these institutional cycles can spawn alternative discourses set in opposition to their prioritized tasks and tools. This dynamic is going on here.

So, how can we apply the concept of Cost to Institutions and to our study of community literacy?