Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

12.14.11 | During the winter holidays, The New York Times runs a series on the lives of New Yorkers who have received assistance from one of seven social service agencies supported by the paper’s Neediest Cases Fund.

The series aims to encourage donations, but its value also comes from focusing on people whose lives are infrequently represented on the front page. A recent story featured Jonathan Ferreira, a college student from the Bronx who received financial support for textbooks and basic dorm furnishings, including towels and sheets. He grew up sharing a cold apartment with his disabled mother and was bullied for liking Beyonce, yet he managed to get into college with 19 credits under his belt.

Computer access was one of the many challenges: “Because Mr. Ferreira had no computer at home, he would leave home by 6 a.m. so he could arrive at school before classes and use the computers there to finish his homework.”

Ferreira’s personal story was amplified by a recent op-ed, “The New Digital Divide.” Law professor Susan P. Crawford, a former special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation policy, warns of the growing impact of the lack of universal access to high-speed wired internet, which is necessary to view and interact with sophisticated web offerings such as video on demand and online learning.

The situtation not only raises questions about equal access to information, but it’s also a red flag for our economic future. Blacks and Latinos make up a growing portion of the workforce, yet they are underrepresented in the wired community. “High-speed access is a superhighway for those who can afford it,” writes Crawford, “while racial minorities and poorer and rural Americans must make do with a bike path.”

Current numbers released last month by the Department of Commerce paint a disappointing picture: “[A] mere 4 out of every 10 households with annual household incomes below $25,000 in 2010 reported having wired Internet access at home, compared with the vast majority — 93 percent — of households with incomes exceeding $100,000. Only slightly more than half of all African-American and Hispanic households (55 percent and 57 percent, respectively) have wired Internet access at home, compared with 72 percent of whites.”

Crawford continues:

These numbers are likely to grow even starker as the 30 percent of Americans without any kind of Internet access come online. When they do, particularly if the next several years deliver subpar growth in personal income, they will probably go for the only option that is at all within their reach: wireless smartphones. A wired high-speed Internet plan might cost $100 a month; a smartphone plan might cost half that, often with a free or heavily discounted phone thrown in.

The problem is that smartphone access is not a substitute for wired. The vast majority of jobs require online applications, but it is hard to type up a résumé on a hand-held device; it is hard to get a college degree from a remote location using wireless. Few people would start a business using only a wireless connection.

Scholars such as S. Craig Watkins have thought a lot about mobile technology usage by black and Latino youth (see this video from a public forum at Morehouse College). Although their research finds that these students are often early and enthusiastic adopters of mobile technologies, the central concern is that mobile tools alone do not encourage sophisticated development of digital skills and literacies.

“Access, it turns out, is only half the battle,” Watkins said in an interview last year. “The question that we have to consider is: After access, now what?”

Plus: For a public policy perspective on the digital divide, Jamilah King has an excellent in-depth story at Colorlines on the impact of telecom industries. For more on community-driven projects focused on increasing access to technology, read Dispatches from the Digital Frontier, a blog by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative. And Danica Radovanovic, a social media researcher and doctoral candidate, has a guest post at Scientific American on the importance of building digital skills and literacies.