Life in Hackney wrote: > I cant let this pass. You are totally missing the point.
I could say the same. > > Ordinary users, which is what the digital divide is about - not the > techies or the faddists who have time to twiddle and experiment with > things - just want a tool that works. Right, and stripping off things that are supposed to work without griping about them is a bad habit to create for users. Imagine if you bought a car and the air conditioner caused the engine to run funny. Would you gripe about it, or would you take the car back in to get fixed? I don't think you have to be a techie or a faddist to do the right thing. I guess for some it's easy to cut off their noses to spite their faces. But then we have all these noseless people running around who can't smell flowers. And part of what we want them to do is smell flowers. If you count the Digital Divide as a lack of commodities, then you are exactly right. Cut off your nose to spite your face, and become the lowest common denominator - and STAY THERE because you don't want things to improve. In a few years, you'll be part of the Digital Divide. > > The technology is the tool, this obsession with bling technology is > getting me down. That you think it's 'bling' doesn't make it so. Style sheets, used properly, can make information accessible easily for other *languages*, for the *visually impaired* and so on. Bling, bling, bling. > > How is any of this tackling the digital divide? How is turning off style sheets tackling the Digital Divide? Hiding from a technology is one way to assure that it doesn't get better, especially for the individual. > As some one who works with groups who are 'making do' in an inner city > borough this is just what alienates them from the technology. Not that > they're techno-phobic, or uneducated, but the culture of the techno > messengers makes them walk away ... You can't have your cake and eat it too. One problem of the Digital Divide is the expectation that all this technology can be used without exercising the intelligence that we all have. When you drive a car, you have to make sure that it has gas, water, oil... pay attention to signs, stay within safe operating limits. A pedestrian attitude does not translate to a person who drives a car. But the reverse is true. We want people to move up. We don't want people to become more stupid because of technology, we want them to become more smart. Turning off style sheets makes them less smart, and does not penalize the sites and that are unfriendly. Instead, we see people not using style sheets and ruining GOOD websites with stylesheets by not portraying them the way they are designed because a few (criminally?) negligent people are being permitted to control the way people use their browsers. The Digital Divide is about community. Do we not expect excellence within the communities that we wish to build? If so, then we need to demand excellence - not handicap our own web browsers. -- Taran Rampersad Presently in: Panama City, Panama [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.
