ARTIST STATEMENT for The Last One to Cross the Digital Divide is a Rotten Egg! 2001

The concept of the Digital Divide arises out of a feverish Millennial marketing pitch that insists universal access to computers and the Internet will bridge the chasm between the rich and the poor. Through computers and the Internet, communities of color and the poor within the United States and the Third World will have access to tremendous new opportunities to raise their incomes and standards of living. Bridging the Digital Divide worldwide, we’re told, will provide democracy, broaden public access, extend the global community, fight deforestation, global warming, world hunger and end poverty! The Third World and the poor of the world will bless the day they first encountered the… LAPTOP… and ended corruption, poverty, military rule, repression, joblessness and injustice.

We, in communities of color, must be very wary of the promises that the high technology industry is peddling. Rather than buying into this techno-mythology, we must ask questions about the real digital divide that is NOT being bridged.

Why aren’t people of color getting the high paying high end technology jobs instead of lower paying entry level work? Why aren’t people of color the owners of high technology companies, instead of employees? Why don’t people of color find themselves reflected on the Internet? Who is producing the content? Who is creating it? Does the Internet reflect our world?

What are we being taught about technology in OUR schools – how to type, or how to write programs? We are led to play follow the leader in this game of computing. Everyday we are breathlessly told that the last one to have a computer will be “left behind” and lose the possibility of participating in the “new global e-conomy”. Stand back and take a look at all the money being transferred from our wallets to Bill Gates, watch people of color filling low paying computer manufacturing jobs all over the world, watch toxic computer waste filling landfills in our communities. Who is getting wealthy and who is the real rotten egg?