State0 Blog

I have recently been working with a local program called Tech Tots that is a part of Communities in Schools. A friend of a friend, Josh Gahr, got me involved. Essentially, the program puts computers in houses of lower income families with small children. It is one way that CIS helps to shrink the digital divide here in Austin. It has been great because, despite living in Texas, I do not get much opportunity to speak Spanish. Put me in a place where I am encouraged to speak Spanish and evangelize the internet and I may never leave.

I have visited the family I was assigned to a few times now. At the moment of connectivity, our first stop was Gmail. However, that was only a momentary pause on the way to Craigslist. If you do not understand Craigslist, you should visit my wife’s blog. Today we made $150 on some fans that I would have paid $150 to get rid of. It is the simple and delightful power of the interweb and it is ancient enough that it works perfectly on dialup. As I drove home, I fielded a call from the man of the house on how he was supposed to go about getting a hold of an old car he had found listed. It is simple things like that which those of us who live in front of computers forget the power of.

Last weekend we hit up a few newer sites that are doing cool things with language learning and I watched their son play with the computer for a while. I am often amazed at how much opportunity for equality we leave on the table by not up-fronting the cost to get people online. I look forward to seeing how Chopra handles this situation.