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Black Futurists In The Information Age
First of a series on "Technology and the Future."
Every new edition of "Technology and the Future," edited by Albert Teich, Director of Science and Policy Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is a monumental event.
First conceived more than a generation ago and repeatedly updated, Teich's book - there are eleven new pieces in this edition (Bedford/St. Martin's) - is almost a literary marvel. It collects and reflects more smart and provocative thinking about the future of technology than any given decade's worth of newspapers and newsmagazines.
In the next few columns, I'll select several of the essays and ideas in Teich's brilliant book to talk about. Then I'll start waiting for the next edition.
***
Sooner or later, race surfaces in discussions of almost every social and political issue in America. Because computing is, on the surface at least, a color- blind culture, it's been slow to join in the conversation.
But as Timothy L. Jenkins, (Yale Law School graduate, CEO of Unlimited Vision, Inc., and one of the creators of the first black online forum on the Net) makes clear in his essay, "Black Futurists in the Information Age," the Net means very different things to different people.
Computing is as white an industry as exists in American life, as any high-tech worker can see just from peering around. Although middle-class African-Americans and other minorities are getting online in substantial numbers, there remains an enormous disparity between whites' computer use and blacks', especially among the so-called underclass.
Online culture is too diverse to generalize about in political terms. But if there any universally-shared ethic among the Net generation, it might be the belief that getting online is an individual responsibility. That might fairly be described as the federal government's attitude as well: Here's the tent; anyone who can make it inside is more than welcome. But everybody has to get there on his own.
Given their histories and experiences, this has enormous different connotations for blacks than it does for whites.
"The benefit and the burden of being black in America arise from the ability and the necessity to view the same things the rest of society sees differently," writes Jenkins. African-Americans are historically suspicious of the larger society's ability to interpret or understand the population it has excluded from so many areas for so long.
Jenkins agrees with most philosophers and social historians that, on the surface, there's every reason to celebrate the proliferation of new Information Age technologies. But along with many other blacks, he can't buy the idea that universally -available information leads inexorably towards democracy.
There is, writes Jenkins, "palpable" evidence that without major social intervention, "the utopian predictions of the Information Age for the society as a whole will paradoxically result in a doomsday scenario for the masses of black people."
Black political leaders don't really have a technological agenda, he writes, and most white politicians ignore the issue of technological equality. Blacks need to move from being gatekeepers to gatecrashers when it comes to technology, Jenkins writes, and to set forth an agenda for technology and the future. As it now stands, prophesies Jenkins, many blacks, already suffering economically in the early stages of Information Age, "may be like the canary in a coal mine, forecasting climactic dangers before they become a general manifestation."
In the final analysis, he writes, the essence of technology ought to be service. "Judged from that perspective, it remains to be seen whether the interests of the black community are served or sacrificed. Absent purposeful leadership involvement, either could be true." And there is anything but purposeful leadership. Black politicians have been as muddled in their discussions about technology and the future as members of Congress.
Writes Jenkins: "If its (technology's) prime effect is to reduce the labor force to an absolute minimum in order to maximize profits or to allow jobs to follow tax breaks and the lowest wages wherever they might lead, then technology, while benefiting some, will have failed us all!"
The equitable distribution of technology has never been a mainstream political issue in America, though it might have more impact on shaping the future than any other single social or political development.
The United States has been embroiled for years in a raging, obsessive debate about sexual imagery online. But apart from the techno-millenial blabber that occasionally erupts from Al Gore and Bill Clinton, hardly anyone mentions the whopper moral issue surrounding technology and the future: What will become of the people who can't or won't learn how to use new information technologies?
What kind of education will be available? What kinds of jobs will they have? What kinds of lives can they aspire to lead?
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Jenkin's fears are well-grounded. About 42 per cent of all U.S. households now have a PC, says a government report released on July 9, l999 (www.usatoday.com). But they're in about 80 per cent of homes in which families make $75,000 or more a year and in fewer than 16 per cent in which families make less than $20,000.
Income isn't the only variable, found the Commerce Department. The gap in Internet use between whites and blacks expanded to 20.7 percentage points last year (32.4 per cent of white households vs. ll.7 per cent of black) from 13.5 percentage points in l997. The difference between white and Hispanic use in l998 rose to 19.5 percentage points from 12.5.
The recent history of computing is clear enough: technology provides an educational and economic bounty for society's best and brightest. The history of underclass Americans - especially black underclass Americans - strongly suggests that if any group is voluntarily or involuntary excluded, it will be the African-American poor.
If they don't catch up soon, Jenkins persuasively warns, they never will. Yet recent surveys show the techno-gap between haves and have nots widening, not shrinking. Don't look for politicians or the press to make this is a significant political issue in the coming presidential election either. It's much easier to exploit fears about new technology than to focus on its real consequences.
It's clear by now even to rabid Luddites that new information technologies will be critical in shaping economic and employment opportunity, freedom of speech and thought, educational advancement and, increasingly, political knowledge and participation. As such, cautions Jenkins, we stand on the threshold of the invention of what may well become a new worldwide technological caste system.
There is no real political ideology online, other than a vaguely Libertarian wariness of government intrusion and a widespread passion for the free movement of ideas and information. It is not an exclusionary culture.
But Jenkins is right. Hardly anyone has seriously addressed the long-term racial and class implications of the emergence of a new techno-elite in the United States - an educated, affluent, overwhelmingly white, and increasingly dominant group.
Next: Ethics for programmers.
When I was first married and a starving musician
and decided to switch to computer consulting
I had to hustle a loan to by my first CP/M
computer. I had to bust my butt studying as well
as hold down a poorly paying full time job. All
this despite a college degree which was paid for
in part because my parents lived a moral life
(and stayed together) and because my mother
as well as my father spent a life working.
What I think I'm hearing by reading the article
and whom it quotes is that while it's ok for
white people to bust their ass 80 hours a week,
blacks need to be pandered to and helped.
If I was a black I would be insulted by the
cyber poverty pimps. I know self respecting
good black people who would be emarrassed to
hear that they need special help when they
seem to be doing just fine without the handouts.
I guess the new political pandering theme
would be: "A computer (and internet)
in every home" instead of the old "A chicken
in every pot".
Will I have to work 100 hours a week to pay
the extra taxes necessary to "fund" the
cyber silver platter for those unwilling to
put 80 hours a week in for themselves?
""The benefit and the burden of being black in America arise from the ability and the necessity to view the same things the rest of society sees differently," writes Jenkins. African-Americans are historically suspicious of the larger society's ability to interpret or understand the population it has excluded from so many areas for so long. "
As a young science nerd, bullied at school and beaten at home, I learned the 'ability and necessity to see things...differently' and became suspicious of jerks' ability to understand me, all without the 'benefit and burden of being black'.
Why must the discussion of the effects of oppression always devolve to racial semantics, immediately shutting out the common experience of ALL human political groups (i.e., two or more nekkid monkeys )? All can realize that, if one can't overpower the oppressor, the option is to outsmart them. Becoming "educated, affluent" now MEANS "increasingly dominant", able to push any agenda of merit, regardless of color. ( check out Bobby Seale's Page).
Racists have suckered the black kids really well; learning in school is "white", thus uncool, and resisting the establishment's agenda of getting them to study becomes the height of emotional fulfillment. Bingo! Another batch of burger-flippers propelled out the door in a puff of self-fulfilling despair. The alternative is 'submission' to 'the Man', an obvious dead-end, right? Well guess what - the institutions ( and cliques ) are hardly less oppressive for any outcasts! Where's the anger, the determination to OUTLEARN the clueless old biddy, the high-handed ass't-principal, and the smug jock thugs?
Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different result. Smashing skulls with that jawbone no longer works at the 21st century's watering holes. The choice is to bite down, endure ( or teach yourself ), and learn, or to accept your masochism and let your morale improve with the beatings.
What some dead Klansman did to shatter the nerve of whatever good menschen, now poor, has no bearing on my aptitude as a programmer or the advantages that it merits. I'm refurbishing old junk boxes in my garage; I'll happily give a few to the Mexican family across the street, but will one of them learn enough to admin it themselves? I can only hope to impress them with the stakes involved in that decision - their daughter plays with mine, after all...
- A.Lurker@Hellmouth.Rim
This can't be first post, I previewed it too long.
If you make race the issue then it becomes the focal point of the discussion. It seems to me that the issue is really one of economics - people that do not have the income available to them to purchase a computer and internet service. Those people could be white, black, hispanic, tall, short, fat, hairy or blue.
A specific demographic may have a larger number of economically depressed people per capita, but that doesn't mean that a poor person of European descent doesn't deserve the same access as some poor person of African descent.
I don't think access to a computer or the internet is a right of individuals, but it would be nice to make sure that we, as a society, help as many people get access as we can. (And free software matched with cheap hardware can really bring us a long way towards that...)
It would be great if everyone could afford a computer. It would also be great if everyone could afford a house, a car, and a nice cruise one a year...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
The inequality of the Web is not racial - it's economic. It's a good thing there is some sort of inequality, as well. Remember the "Shoe Event Horizon" in Hitchhiker's Guide, where everyone on the planet was making shoes? That could be us. Do we really want a world in which everyone thinks he should be a sysadmin or a programmer?
The reality of the modern economy is that more than a third of the population is limited by ability or gumption to working in the low-end service sector. We can't change that, and unless you want to make your own McFries, I humbly submit that we don't really want to.
Let's keep the government and everyone else out of this and let the cream rise to the top naturally. Black, white, et al - who cares?
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
It is unfortunate that African Americans are continuously used as a substitute for "the underclass". Largely true, but unfortunate.
There is often a reason why people are poor.
Some were born poor, without the means to rise above it. Whether lacking skills or the ability and oportunities to learn those skills, it rarely happens that someone is able to overcome their birthright. If all you know is based on ignorance and poverty, chances are, that is all that will ever come out of you.
Then there are people that are lazy. Their job or trade gets "replaced", and they simply do not want to learn another. Our society has made it relatively easy to live by essentially doing nothing. For many of these people the effort to get educated and get a job that might pay a smidgin above wellfare is not economically sensible.
Why are blacks considered poor and lazy?
You have to consider where these people come from. Here you have an entire race that did not earn their full participation in this country until only 30 years ago!!! That always blows my mind. This culture has been associated with poverty in the United States since the country was born. The majority of these people have known nothing but ignorance and poverty, and it is only because they had the bad luck to born black in the U.S.
It takes an exceptional person to rise above this. We all have seen it done on many occasions, but unfortunately the majority are not able to. And it is not because they do not try and are lazy, but because they have been ingrained that life is this way from the day they were born.
As to the people who state, "well now they have every oportunity as everyone else and we should not bend over backwards to accomodate them!", I do not really agree with. They do not have every oportunity in the world. Not when the a large number of them are born poor. That is a huge disadvantage, and the reason they were born poor is because of the direct (or lack of) actions of our country.
So I do think we need to go out of our way to help this society of poor black americans. I do think we "owe" it to them in a way. Not to go so far as to disadvantage others, but to concentrate more on giving more opportunities to rise above the poverty they have known for generations and generations. These are not people getting "replaced" and are now lazy... they never had a place!
And I guarantee that those that now and hopefully will have a place in our society, will stay there!
We need to go out of our way to give them the oportunities that we kept away from them only 30 years ago!
They are members of our civilization, and whether you like it or not, we have a duty to see that all of us can make it. Pure Darwinism worked in the middle ages... and society was set back 100's of years.
(RANT)
You know, I'm getting sick of people screaming
about equality, and how so-and-so minority doesn't
meet this spec, and so and so minority isn't on
the same level as this other group of people..
Yes, we're all equal, then, we aren't. I can't
rap for the life of me, i'm just an average white
boy, I can't jump either. I can't cook well, I
certainly do not have the social ties or the
culture that I see in a lot of minority groups
all I have is what I've worked to aquire myself,
Knowledge. Pretty much what I'm saying is that
no matter what the color, we all have the -capacity-
to be 'equal' but you know, I think some of us
just don't want to be, maybe there are black
americans that just don't WANT to screw around
with computers, they're happy with their lifestyle
and their education, and what they do, and they're
good at what they do, when I probably suck at it.
As for this article, I look around at my coworkers
and have to say that it's total BS. I work in a
company that prides itself on the fact that it has
tapped the great resources in the masses of
america, all of america, the red, yellow, black,
white, orange and plaid.
Maybe if people will STOP looking at America as
being comprised of a lot of groups of people of
different colors we'll be able to get somewhere
and stop worrying about discrimination damnit,
I think the only reason the children even have
an inkling of discrimination is because they hear
about it so much, and they see it from their
parents, it WILL go away if we just stop making
it such a big deal, it seems now to just be
something to bitch and whine about. heh.
(/RANT)
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
THis article has seriously made me want to go out and join a club or other organization that helps poor people 'get connected.' In a sense, the whole 'free software' movement is great, as long as we realize that it isn't just about freedom, it is also about free beer.
Everyone keeps harkening on, "Oh yeah, and you can SELL linux too." But you know what I think is another aspect of the revolution? The fact that you can make a $200 box for a home, with a free (as in beer) OS, so that your grandma or a poor inner-city youth can experience the same inforation as everyone else.
Freedom is not freedom if you have to buy it from (Choose your favorite software vendor).
Maybe it is not time yet to start calling for free beer (and the social-guerilla tactics are exactly why I like ESR), but soon (comrades) soon we should stop putting down and rather pick up our neighbors. Strange that code may set us free....