The (Grand) digital divide

The digital divide and this weeks information definitely brought up topics that I havent though about yet. When I thought about the digital divide I thought about how there are the millennials and then theres the older people who complain about not being able to work a laptop or their iPhones… but now going through this weeks information I feel a little naive for thinking that way and not thinking more in depth. I want to talk about 2 important topics that we should invest more time and thought into and one of those is people who dont have access to the internet or any type of technology are being left behind. LITERALLY. economically, financially, educationally, creatively they are being left in the dark. and by leaving people in the dark we dont allow them the opportunity to bring new ideas to light or even allow them to catch up and start building opportunity, and this leads us to leave all of these potentially amazing people and ideas in the dark too which halts the progression of our society. The second is there are so many opportunities that come from technology, and with the world we live in now we are only heading that way more and more. Ted Talk speaker Elizabeth Lindsey talks about a person she helped get access to a basic technology training so she could maneuver through computers or computer programs and how to be savvy at navigating through them. Now that same person has a stable job, no longer lives out of her car and has a community willing to support her and her want for a better life. There are so many people out there like the one Elizabeth helped, that want a better life and have that motivation they just need that support to catch up with the tech world and everything its taking over. No one ever told me that I would have to know how Microsoft works in high school in preparation for college, it was just expected and thats crazy! no one told my dad who owns his own business he would have to know how to learn how Microsoft works, how to send out emails and invoices… and most importantly there are no training sessions in place to teach people how to work these programs that are solely online! There is a huge gap right now, and we are only making the gap bigger and bigger every year we dont look within our communities and what they are needing to catch up with this digital divide. Because the question isnt what do they need? its what do we need to do to catch them up? because they are already behind and this we need to fix.