"Digital Divides" Movie Response

The first thing that struck me from this movie was how outdated it felt. Hearing about Al Gore congratulating the first school to implement internet connections seemed outrageous to me, as they have been an extremely important part of my education and I can't think of a time when I've learned without them. The part of the movie where they talked about how it was controversial to implement internet access in all schools also baffled me.

Another topic that the film touched on only briefly that interested me was the shift from blue- to white- collar work in the American workforce. LIS 201 discussed this shift at length. Basically they found that with labor overseas becomming cheaper, outsourcing became more and more attractive. Companies shifted their needs for physical labor and assembly line workers was diminishing. but at the same time the demand for internet fluent information workers was increasing. America had gone through a transition from being an industrial society to a postindutrail (network, information) society.

The story about Luisa's struggle to bridge the digital divide was very interesting to me. It seemed interesting that her desire to cross the gap was at first benificial, but later detremental. At first she was able to seperate herself from some dangerous activities that her peers were involved in, but eventually her demand for a new computer made her fall behind in school, because her job took too much of her time.

As far as the whole New Tech High School idea goes, I feel like it was an antiquated fad from the internet boom era. The students attending that school were cheated out of a "normal" high school experience, but it also put them in boxes (it makes me think of the theme song from "Weeds"). They were all expecting to go into the same feild. Perhaps that is to be expected, since they chose to attend New Tech instead of their normal school, but the whole idea seemed both foreign and stupid to me.