Privilege

My own privilege is significantly more abundant than that of so many others, and I felt a barrier between me and engaging in online Web 2.0 communities. 

One of my bigger conundrums swirls around the following thought: as nonprofits, we are looking to engage people across the privilege spectrum. 

• How can we use the Web to do this? 
• How can we change the Web to do this better? 
• How can we make sure that people poor in internet privilege (not just skills) don’t get poorer? 
• How can people lacking technology resources partake?  
• Are the “oh, just go to the library” strategies feasible?  Can they fully partake? 
• What specifically does fully partaking entail, and how does it impact people if they cannot? 

I guess my hope is that with this blog, I can at very least work up some strategies and solutions from my own experiences, and at most work up some conversation, collaboration, and change.

Personal is Professional

Nonprofits, and all organizations for that matter, need to effectively use interactive Web technology for any number of reasons (seems like a different post and lots of other people’s blogs), but if we’re not aware of it and fluent in its flavor and culture, our usage will be inefficient and ineffective.  In order to be fluent for work purposes, we need to be fluent for all purposes.

I’m not saying this to try to justify spending work time on a personal blog.  This is not work time, though I’m at my desk at the moment.  Believe me, I’d rather be on my couch.  I just don’t see a way to be good at what I do without reading blogs and blogging right back.  It’s personal-time professional development that I’m happy to take on.

I have the ability to spend personal time on what I understand to be professional development.  I have my own personal resources, including a laptop, to deal with my much-less-than-tragic internet semi-isolation.  Not everyone can do this, and not everyone thinks they should.  What can we in nonprofits do about that?  Should we do anything?

Perception

How badly does slow response speed come off to people more plugged in than I?  Is 21 hours in fact an eternity?  Are my limitations only barriers in my own head and insignificant out there in the Internet community?  Are they in other would-be Internet participants’ heads, stopping them from trying?

Whine Whine Whine

Really, whining is not what I’m trying to do.  My purpose is to highlight what unequal access means for people through my own, “not exactly roughing it” experiences.

One of my frustrations has been that the internet is self-propagating.  To find networking answers, for example, I found that what I needed was an internet connection.  <ironic sigh>  What I mean to say is, the poor get poorer.  Ancient phenomenon, modern medium.

The other thing is, typical solutions (“Eh, just go to the library”) don’t work.  It’s almost never about just popping onto a computer for an hour to take care of a couple of things.  It’s much broader than that.  To stay current with what’s happening on the internet, you (or at least I) need to be on it.  Yes, part of staying current does include the latest drunk pictures my friends from high school posted on Facebook.  But part of it is reading blogs like Beth Kanter’s (and following the recommended links), or establishing myself in the nonprofit Twitterpack, or just poking around and seeing what I find.  Popping over to the library once a week doesn’t really cut it.

The nature of the beast is that without home internet access, you’re cut off from not only important “putter time,” but also from the best resources about the resource.

 

What the hey?

My home internet went down a few months ago.  My Internet provider says it’s a problem with my computer.  My computer service people say it’s a problem with my Internet provider.  I find myself stuck in the middle with no home internet access.

Now, cut to my professional life: I work for a nonprofit and am the de-facto tech guru of my group within the organization.  Much of what we expect of the people we work with is online, whether it’s learning English, filling out their timesheets, or applying to be part of our programs.  We always tell people that if they don’t have Internet at home, they should just go to the library and get access there, or just use the Internet at work, or just go to a coffee shop.  No problem. 

Well, problem.  Many problems.  And that is what and how I am challenging myself to blog.