Life always brings interesting things to the fore if you pay attention. Today, after visiting my mother here in St. Petersburg, Florida for a while, has been an eye opening experience for this 33 year old technology-wielding sojourner... and Circuit Rider (Hello Debbie).
My mother is in charge of opening the 'computer room' in Graham Park - a home/apartment center run by the State of Florida (I believe) for senior citizens. So I went down with her this morning to the computer center. People in wheelchairs showed up, checking email, playing games, and so forth. It was a very eye opening experience. Many of the people who use the computer have their own computers. But they go down to the telecenter for very social reasons; there are usually a line of people waiting to get in to use the 8 computers. One of the computers was reportedly giving trouble, but it didn't crash when I started it up and opened up a bunch of applications - nobody knew what was wrong with it, and nobody could really explain to me why it wasn't being used. What's cool about all of this is that my mother is writer; a senior citizen who is disabled; indeed, installing Mozilla for her was a big deal. She has her own weblog ( http://soapboxpapers.blogspot.com/ ), and I'm encouraging her to join in and give her perspective - through her weblog, and perhaps through this list. I'll be blogging about it as well as time permits because as I explain things to her that I have taken for granted, I learn how better to explain it to others. Maybe someday I shall get it right. But the importance of Telecentres in this context is not too different from other telecenters - it's mainly social. This has lead me to believe that there are two discernible aspects of telecenters which may be worth acknowledging - local social and distance social. Local social is a matter of meeting people in the context of the Telecenter, and even gossiping about what happened yesterday. Distance social is a matter of interacting with people that are geographically separate. I suppose when I see someone in a wheelchair, I do not look away - I see a mind on wheels. And I'll be talking with a few of these people and, more importantly, listening. They have a lot to tell us. If there are any resources for this sort of telecenter that people are aware of, please let me know. It would be nice to have more of these minds telling us what they need and what they want. -- Taran Rampersad [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxgazette.com http://www.a42.com http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net "Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
