Q: (tj@salon) Describe what measures you would take to get more minorities on the internet, such as 1) providing more government assistance to purchase computers 2) asking computer companies to provide discounts for those living in depressed economic areas 3) funding for inner-city schools to get on the "information superhighway", etc. (the above are examples, not criteria).
When I first started on the real Internet, through panix.com back in '92, "nobody" was online. Computers cost at least 2 grand, and ppp had yet to be perfected. So my initial assumptions were that black folks might create an alternate network, and sure enough, brothers were working fidonet. The bbs world was clunky and cheap, but it was real networking and people were getting hooked up. At the time, I was part of the open mike poetry circuit and also a 'guerrila poet'. I was one of the speakers at the '7th avenue romp' on 'white flight friday', a march led by William Kunstler and others in protest of police brutality in Los Angeles. Part of my interest was to see those people who might organize a coffeehouse or put together a newsletter have the technical capability of communicating with such others nationwide. I would have been happy with 20 strategic networked computers in progressive hangouts across the country. The political activists had not hooked up with the technology people, so much of the political talk on fidonet was weak, and the technophobia of the 'heads' was pathetic. I sought to bridge the gap.
So the whole 'minority interest' argument has always sounded weak to me, because the pioneers were already doing work. If you lived in LA and were hooked up to the political/poetry scene, then you had already taken a trip to the Good Life Cafe, Eso Wan Books, Aquarian Books and the World Stage. You might have already talked to Quincy Troupe about the Black Arts Movement or Donald Bakeer about the history of the Crips. These were the folks with the serious content. Now I think there were plenty of good reasons to get such people hooked into electronic publication, and I also was very high on the idea of providing archived transcripts of such seminars and speeches. But I was never convinced that the mere existence of networks would draw huge numbers of people who otherwise did not pay attention to such events.
Today, there is a great deal of content of general interest on the net, and brand new computers are as cheap as old beat up cars. Access is cheaper than cable tv and software is simple enough for fifth graders to run. I recognize that the net is still out of the economic reach of millions of people, however what's more important is the availability and utility of content to the unwired masses. Nobody really has any idea what people who are off the net expect and want from the net. Well, I certainly don't. And I believe that if those people, whoever they are, wherever they are don't decide for themselves what kind of networking they should do, then the net will be no more useful to them than television.
So I see it as an important function for people who have network access to demonstrate to the 'internet indigent' the infinite possibilities, listen and build. That has to take place at the community level. What I oppose is the assumption that just because yuppies are doing it, that poor folks should do it or be 'left behind'.
Government assistence will be too slow. If it's done at all, it should be done in the form of block grants for network infrastructure. For example, a backbone to network public schools with community centers, libraries, and malls. In Los Angeles, for example, there are police stations in malls which often double as 'community centers'. A mall would be an excellent place for networked computers. In such places, there needs to be at least 10 machines, you couldn't run a video arcade with just 4 boxes, I can't understand why public libraries never seem to have more than 2 or 3.
I don't want to be in the position to second-guess the reasons that only 5 out of 31 black Americans are online. I've been in the computer business myself for 16 years and I'm not impressed by the hype. Being online for its own sake is a waste of time. (My daughter is sitting at my feet as I type, trying to make herself a paper airplane that I could be folding). Again, if poor blacks and latinos don't have networked computers, I beleive it is primarily because they don't see a compelling interest to get them. There is little awareness of what useful content resides on, or will be built on the internet. But I do beleive that they would like to hookup as individuals across the distances.