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Homeless in Cyberspace
6/28/2006
By Terry Calhoun
I often hold up my Treo 650 and my Dell Latitude X1 and say to people, “This is all I need and my office is wherever I can get a Sprint signal.” The mobility of my professional functionality will be increasing over the next few years, as Washtenaw County, the home of Ann Arbor, Michigan, will be blanketing the county – even my rural section – with wireless within two years. Then I won’t even need the Treo.
I was kind of startled the other day to read a few articles about how even homeless people are managing to get connected and online. Some of them even have smart phones and laptops, so I guess they could say that “My home is wherever I happen to be and can get plugged in.” We probably aren’t far from the point in time when most people are connected wherever they are, whenever they wish – even the homeless.
I don’t know if this means “the digital divide” is now officially defunct, or not. It hasn’t been very long now that I was hearing, “We can’t go fully to online communications because we’ll be disadvantaging those who don’t do e-mail or the Web.” I don’t hear that anymore. My employer organization, as well as organizations whose boards I serve on have found that we can triple the response rate for leadership elections by providing members with an easy way to vote online, for example.
In Wired News, the recent article “Laptops Give Hope to the Homeless,” the writer says that “While people living in shelters and alleys have found it difficult to cross social divides, the digital divide seems to disappear on the streets. Nearly all homeless people have e-mail addresses, according to Michael Stoops, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. ‘More have e-mail than have post office boxes,’ Stoops said. ‘The Internet has been a big boon to the homeless.’”
This was a total surprise, almost a shock, to me, and I am delighted. First, because there is nothing I enjoy more than learning something that just d'esn’t fit with my preconceptions. And also because it is wonderful that we’re able to find a way to ensure that those who are the worst off, financially, can still partake in the new “utility” that is the Internet. These include the homeless bloggers.
One, called “The Homeless Guy,” starts his most recent blog: “The worst kind of hypocrisy comes from people in authority, ‘cause they are the ones who should be leading by example, both ethically and morally. If the front of the train is on the wrong track, the rest of the train is sure to follow.”
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