Technology: Is it available for everyone?
By: Rocio Villalobos
It would be correct to say that advances in technology make our lives
easier in many ways, but at the same time I think that in general these
same advances are creating more barriers to entry for the average American.
In our day and age a person can do just about anything online: shop,
pay bills, look up information, talk to friends, keep up with current
affairs, etc. Things like computers and the internet are easy to use
for most of us who were born in the age of technology and given easy
access to this technology, but it's a pretty different scenario for
those who weren't; as a result they tend to struggle to do things using
these new pieces of technology that most of us might consider simple.
It's common to expect a teenager or young adult to be able to manipulate
something like a computer because we've grown up in a time where these
tools were usually available for our use at a library, school, or even
at home. Obviously, the same can't be said for older generations. A
lot of grown adults and the elderly are oblivious as to how to operate
a computer simply because they didn't have them around during their
childhood. If they learned how to use one chances are it's mainly because
they had to learn how to use one for their jobs or because they bought
one for their kids. For example, both of my parents never learned how
to use a computer. Even using the VCR we have becomes a big ordeal because
they get frustrated due to the fact that they don't know how to get
it to work despite the numerous times my siblings and I have tried to
explain it to them. Growing up they didn't have things like that around;
the only reason they purchased them later in life was for their kids.
An increasing number of jobs that provide good pay require people to
be knowledgeable about our current technology. The majority of people
lead busy lives that leave them very little time to spend trying to
teach themselves how to use every new piece of technology that's created
each year. It's harder for those with little experience with technology
to land a great job because they don't have certain skills, which affects
them negatively. Even knowing a little bit about "basic" technology,
such as computers, puts a person at an advantage in the job market when
compared to someone who doesn't know a thing about them.
Now, not only are grown adults and the elderly at a disadvantage, low-income
families tend to be at a disadvantage as well. Many low-income families
don't have the financial resources to buy things like computers, therefore
children in these families are not able to acquire basic skills dealing
with computers and computer-related programs. Children normally go to
schools within their own neighborhood; this means that children from
low-income families that live in poor neighborhoods will end up at poor
schools that don't have a lot of technology available for the students'
use. A good deal of children are never even able to get a home computer
and also don't have time to get on a bus and head to the nearest library
in hopes of learning how to use one.
Technology makes us more efficient in the sense that it helps us save
time and makes tasks easier for us to perform. However, even though
the aforementioned things are true, the world tends to forget that not
every person starts out in the same place in life.
Some are more privileged and have room for more opportunities than others.
The average person in our country isn't rich or even middle-class; it
seems rather silly to expect the less fortunate to own and know how
to operate pieces of technology that only the more economically stable
have access to. If the government is as preoccupied with the future
of this country as they'd like for us to believe, namely the children,
I think they'd make more of an effort to eliminate the disparities that
exist within public schools. After all, the purpose of going to school
is to prepare children for the real world, and the world we live in
is increasingly requiring its inhabitants to be familiar with technology.
