Editor's Introduction

Special Issue: The Politics of Access

Jonathan Taylor, Executive Editor
mailto:taylorj@ferris.edu

It is a commonplace among scholars of techno-literacy that access to current technology is strongly related to cultural power structures whose boundaries are determined by class, race, and gender.

For example, back in 1994, Paul LeBlanc compared computer access, instruction, and literacy in computerized secondary schools in the U.S. as it was mediated by socioeconomics. He found that:

Afflicted by poorer computer-to-student ratios, the need to test well, and a lack of quality software . . . poor and minority students often end up isolated at the computer, doing workbook-style exercises and engaged in the least liberatory of applications one might imagine for computer-based learning. (31)

He further adds that in these "computerized" schools, in some instances student to computer ratios meant at best, students could expect one hour a week of access, and in others, a single computer would be shared by as many as six classrooms (29). Keep in mind that LeBlanc only looked at schools with computers.

How have things changed in the meantime? In 1999, Cynthia Selfe found that "Although the push for technological is supposed to benefit all Americans, it has instead supported, and perhaps exacerbated, inequities in American culture" (xx).

Given these statements, we wondered both how scholars who focus on spheres beyond school-related literacy might look at the issue and what research is currently being conducted on this issue. With that in mind, we issued a call for texts for a special issue, The Politics of Access to begin the second year of The Journal of Literacy and Technology.

We received many submissions which challenged our notion of literacy. For instance, Claudia Herbst, in "Blood, Sweat and Code: A New Text, Power and Illiteracy in the Context of Gender" looks at how computer code is becoming "a new form of text." She examines how code works culturally and finds, surprisingly, many similarities between code and religious texts, including that "Both religious text and code are generated, based on education, by an elite group of men." Ultimately, she warns that "The power of code as a culturally defining text should not be ignored; neither should code’s genderedness."

David Sheridan, in "Digital Detroit and the Frail Particulars of Everyday Life" looks at the issue of access in a different way, namely how Detroit is represented digitally, by whom, and for what purpose. With cautious optimism, he finds many Detroit-related sites working to recover Detroit's image from the media. Sheridan writes that "America needs to be reminded that black people in Detroit often live in neatly-kept homes on tree-lined streets with green grass and nearby parks" because "When Detroit makes the news, it's usually because there's a fire or shooting or drug bust." Sites like the Grandmont Rosedale Development Corporation do the reminding. However, a large portion of the population does not have access to the tools or the knowledge required to develop a web presence, and he argues that

We need hundreds of sites devoted to envisioning Detroit, and they need to be created by students from Detroit's Mackenzie High School and by single mothers from Mexicantwon, by people while live in the Brewster projects and those who inhabit the Eastside nursing homes of Grand Blvd., by the squatters who live in the burned-out mansions of Brush Park, and by the thousands of people who live in bungalows on tree-lined streets throughout the city.

Kira Isak Pirofski in "Are All Schools Equally Wired?
An Overview of the Digital Divide in Elementary and Secondary Schools in the United States" provides a history of the integration of technology in US schools. She reports that "Elementary and secondary schools were among the last societal institutions in the United States to adopt Internet and computer technology." Once the schools got on the ball,

By the dawn of the 21st century, educators, administrators, and government largely acknowledged the need to have computers available for their elementary and secondary school children. However, this acknowledgment did not translate into equal distribution of technology, and many districts which included rural, low income, and minority children have not been outfitted with computers and computer software. This inequity has come to be referred to as "the digital divide."

Pirofski provides a succinct historical overview of the issue of access in public schools in the US and ultimately finds that, while it is not clear whether or not computers make students smarter, computer skills are increasingly a requirement for access to the workplace and are being denied to poor, rural, and minority students.

Finally, Sidney Eve Matrix provides a book review of Jeremy Rifkin's The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism Where All of Life is a Paid-for Experience, which is "a critical examination of contemporary US economy and the role of media monopolies and the entertainment industries in commodifying cultural experiences." This book is important to the issue of access because

Rifkin documents how the role played by local community institutions is being transferred to the pay-for-access entertainment industry, resulting in fewer unmediated opportunities for people to communicate and connect. Simultaneously, the lines of communication between people are owned and controlled by ICT transnational corporations, making access not a privilege but a prerequisite for participating in culture and community.

From early on, it has been clear that access to computer technology and its empowering literacy has been a privilege, not a right. That privilege is determined by cultural and socioeconomic factors, which can probably be argued for most forms of literacy and the accompanying technology. When one keeps in mind that all writing is dependent on technology, then questions like Who had access to books in the 19th century? Who had access to any sort of literacy in the middle ages? Who had access to rhetoric in ancient Greece? become related and profound.

While it seems clear that the "digital divide" and the longer technological divide has a long history and will continue to persist, with changes the writers in this issue recommend, the US and the world can break this cycle.

I close this introduction with an invitation to join our discussion. Drop us an e-mail, or consider submitting a text. We look forward to hearing from you.

Works Cited

LeBlanc, Paul J. "The Politics of Literacy and Technology in the Secondary School Classroom." Literacy and Computers: The Complications of Teaching and Learning with Technology. Eds. Cynthia L. Selfe and Susan Hilligoss. New York: MLA, 1993. 22-36.

Selfe, Cynthia L. Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1999.