[1474] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
MIT, computers and ethical values.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aaron D. Mihalik)
Mon Oct 6 11:37:14 2003
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 11:05:02 -0400
From: "Aaron D. Mihalik" <mihalik@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031006104328.02251f88@hesiod>
The second half of the article is particularly interesting (and relevant to
MIT).
Towards the end, there is this choice quote: "Some of these young people
have spent large parts of their lives in front of computer screens. As a
result, their social and ethical values have never fully developed."
Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe
March 18, 2001, Sunday ,THIRD EDITION
SECTION: FOCUS; Pg. H4
LENGTH: 1008 words
HEADLINE: ROBERT A. JORDAN;
DIGITAL DIVIDE'S CUTTING EDGE
BYLINE: By Robert A. Jordan
BODY:
THE GREAT "DIGITAL DIVIDE" _ THAT SEPARATES PEOPLE WHO ARE REAPING THE
BENEFITS OF NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THOSE WHO ARE NOT _ HAD BEEN NARROWING UNDER
THE CLINTON-GORE ADMINISTRATION BUT IS DESTINED TO WIDEN IN THE BUSH-CHENEY
YEARS.
Worse, there also appears to be a widening of the "human divide" in this
high-tech age, with many people on the high side not even remotely
connected to people on the other.
Clear examples of the digital divide were pointed out in surveys on
computer access conducted by the US Department of Commerce. In 1998, for
example, less than 12 percent of African-Americans and Hispanics had online
access, while more than 30 percent of white Americans did.
Last year, according to the survey, 23 percent of African-Americans and
Hispanics had online access - a nearly 100 percent increase from 1998 - and
46 percent of white Americans had access, a 50 percent increase in two years.
A key reason for this sharp increase, particularly for African-Americans,
was the National Telecommunications Information Administration, the
Clinton-Gore program that, through the Commerce Department, helped to bring
computer and Internet access particularly to poor and urban areas.
But the Bush-Cheney administration has decided to drastically cut the
Commerce Department's budget that financed the NTIA and other programs
aimed at closing the "digital divide." As a result, critics argue, the
divide will widen and in turn broaden the divide between the haves and the
have-nots.
According to the Commerce Department figures, nearly 57 percent of white
American households have a computer, while only 33 percent of
African-American households do. The survey also found that 30 percent of
people earning less than $25,000 had online access compared with 86 percent
of people earning more than $75,000.
And these statistics tell only part of the story. A growing problem with
this divide is the lack of understanding that people at the high end,
especially young people, have of people at the low end.
An unfortunate example of this occurred recently at a school that is the
academic embodiment of the nation's ongoing technological advancement, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In a December issue of The Toke, a parody of MIT's official student
newspaper, The Tech (the Tech board also publishes The Toke), Cambridge
Licensing Commission Chairman Benjamin C. Barnes was portrayed in a
front-page article as Ben "Pimp Daddy" Barnes speaking to a group in a
slang language and using words such as "ho's" (whores) as in "Where's my
ho's at?" Next to the article, which had the headline "CLC to MIT: Drink
Up!" was a doctored photo of Barnes holding a large bottle of rum and
standing beside a keg of beer.
The article was supposed to be about a fictional meeting between Barnes and
MIT students, with the smaller headline reading "Board Pledges Not To
Prosecute Alcohol Violations, Unleashing New Era of Debauchery Campuswide."
Perhaps the most shocked person to see this poor, tasteless version of a
parody was Barnes himself. Barnes, who grew up in a mostly black housing
development in the shadows of MIT, is a graduate of Fisk University and
Suffolk Law School and a former assistant district attorney in both Los
Angeles County and Middlesex County. He is highly regarded among his peers
as chairman of the commission.
MIT President Charles M. Vest met with Barnes and apologized and also wrote
to The Tech editorial board sharply criticizing the article as
"unacceptable." That was a positive gesture from MIT. But Barnes wanted to
meet with the students on the board who were responsible for the parody.
He did not want to take them to task for their actions. Instead, he wanted
to see if he could help the students understand why such a poor parody
could be construed, even unwittingly, as racial insensitivity or, worse, as
a form of character assassination.
Barnes, with two other commissioners, met with the students two weeks ago
in his office. The students apologized for what they described as a lack of
judgment.
The students, while talking about the diversity of their staff,
acknowledged that there were no African-Americans on their board. If there
had been, Barnes pointed out, they would have asked for changes in the
article. And no African-American was called in to review the article.
The meeting, which lasted about 45 minutes, was somewhat instructive for
both Barnes and the students. The students suggested that perhaps they are
too isolated, living in a sheltered environment on campus.
Barnes said that in an earlier conversation with some of the students, they
attempted to explain that they were using the "hip-hop" or "rap" language
in the quotes they attributed to Barnes. They also told Barnes that it was
a generational language, suggesting that most young blacks, and some
whites, spoke that way. Barnes, 35, said he grew up on rap, but that is not
the way he talks.
Barnes realized from this experience that racism has no intellectual
boundaries, whether it comes "from a sharecropper's son or a person with
perfect scores on his Scholastic Aptitude Tests."
This experience was a clear example of how the "digital divide" is
impacting the thinking of young people on the cutting edge of technology.
"My only hope," Barnes said, "is that these people do not take what they
see on MTV as the true black experience."
As Paul Davis, a friend of Barnes and a cofounder of Predictive Networks, a
prominent technology company in Cambridge, said, this was not just MIT's
problem. "Some of these young people have spent large parts of their lives
in front of computer screens. As a result, their social and ethical values
have never fully developed."
If President Bush continues to cut programs that can bridge this divide -
and if colleges, universities, and other involved organizations fail to
recognize the urgency of closing it - the United States could again become
a nation of two groups, "separate and unequal" and divided, as in "divided
we all fall."
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2001
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