The Digital Divide

Selections from Technicolor emphasize the technological inequalities that permeate cyberspace.  These inequalities are not merely economic issues, yet also inequalities amongst race and sex. Logan Hill's short essay, Beyond Access, elaborates the lack of access to minorities of fundamental technology that exists in American homes.  Hill lets the reader know that minorities are two to three times as likely to not have a telephone in their home, with African American and Latino homes being half as likely to have a computer than whites and Asians with less than that having internet access.  Hill believes lack of access to the internet is an issue that has been placed aside widening the digital divide instead of placing proper technological material in schools and libraries to allow those who need access to learn the skills of the internet that essentially runs our nation, our world today.

Mimi Nguyen loved the Xerox machine, working on her "zines", cutting and pasting and copying. She slowly moved to a new dimension of design: the computer.  A web journal became her new zine, writing her thoughts, while also posting images of some of her zines.  As an Asian American woman she wrote in her punk rock, cynical voice on the type of material that would pop up on the internet when searching for asian+women.  Of course all that popped up was pornographic material which only reinforces the notions of what kind of people are making these sights available, straight, white men.  She quoted Peggy Phelan who wrote, "If representational visibility equals power, then almost-naked young white women should be running Western culture."  As Nguyen goes on to say, that if representational visibility equals power, then naked Asian women should be running  most of cyberspace, especially when that is all that shows up when "asian+women" is searched on the web.  Comments started to come to her Web journal, criticizing her identity, mocking her and accusing her.  These brutal responses to her website are examples of how the hierarchy of "the body" continues not only in the natural world, but the cyberworld.   It is Nguyen's essay that I feel I could explain to others, as I have been subjected to some hostile remarks - not on a web journal, but through other commentary the internet allows users to do.

Guillermo Gomez-Pena wrote a compelling essay on being a Latino and the assumptions of his inability to properly learn the ways of technology or computers. He draws on the stereotypes of Latinos being incapable of learning such skills of the computer and other technologies.  If they were given the proper access to such technologies they would be able to acquire skills. You cannot learn how to use a piece of technology unless it is in front of you.  Duh.

Something I am unclear about is Henri Lefebrve's notion on "extra-technical".  Please help me understand!