RC: My training was as a librarian. I worked at the Chicano library at UC Berkeley, I went to library school at Berkeley and in 1979 I came to UCLA. I used computers for building library tools, databases and CD-ROMS. Around ‘84/’85 we got some money for resources on Latinos and the Web. I learned a lot of the technology. The big thing for me, though, was on the one hand I was providing some relevant cultural information, but on the other hand it was very clear to me that people in communities weren’t getting this information. There was really a gap between what was happening in the universities and what was happening in low income communities. So ever since ’86 or ’87 I’ve been working with low income communities, specifically with youth, trying to get them to use technology more. In the last year and a half, I’ve also been doing a lot of policy work in Sacramento to try to get more resources for low-income communities so that they can use this new technology.

SB: Why do you work primarily with community technology centers as opposed to schools, universities or publicly funded institutions?

RC: This new technology provides an opportunity for us to build new spaces. The problem with libraries or schools is they use new technology to support old curriculum. We really need to hear a lot more from youth. So my principle effort has been more outside of the institutions. While we work with traditional institutions like schools, our classes are not like being in school. Schools face tremendous challenges outside of technology, but with technology it’s really big time. Many schools now are beginning to have access to technologies, but the access they have is very uneven. Some of the national reports tell you, 99% of our schools are connected to the Internet. Once you look closer, though, the real question is how many classrooms are connected or is there just one lab? So, there’s still a lot of work to be done just on the infrastructure. Secondly, many teachers don’t know how to use the technology. Often they want to use the old curriculum. Another way technology is used is to reinforce testing. So they’re taking the creativity out of the medium. Instead of building new learning environments they’re just changing the old ones a little bit.

SB: What do you think needs to happen in order for teachers to learn how to use technology?

RC: It’s not just a matter of teachers knowing how to use the technology, because sometimes they might know. But it’s different when you ask "how are we going to change or integrate technology into your curriculum?" That’s not an immediate thing that happens. There has to be support for training teachers. But often the training is geared to using the equipment rather than giving teachers time to actually transform their lessons and work with other teachers to create units that incorporate technology and to talk about the issues. That kind of push I don’t see happening.

SB: Some teachers feel that there’s no time for kids or teachers to play on computers. The argument for kids is that if they don’t play on computers, if they just work on them, they’re not going to like them as much in general. What is your experience with this?

RC: We had a focus group in Riverside with youth and one young person said, no, he didn't have a computer, but he did have a Nintendo. Ironically, that really is a computer. Another student said if youth knew more about how computers could be fun and applied to do other things, they would be more interested. It’s important to use them as tools of learning and all of that, but also for recreation.

One of the issues we found is that students are frequently exposed to twenty or thirty minutes in a week to a computer. But we found in the Computers in Our Future community technology centers students average an hour and forty-five minutes. You just don’t sit down and automatically learn everything about a computer. You have to know how it works, feel comfortable, have the time to get to know what it does and use it for a lot of different purposes. But a lot of times I think what happens is that students have a very narrow and sometimes negative exposure to computers.

We call it cyber segmentation where you have people that might have access to computers, but what they can use those computers for is very variable and we have not asked the right questions to document this.

SB: Some people see the "Digital Divide" as closing? Do you agree?

RC: I disagree. People who take that position are often in the industry, they’re selling the stuff and they say it’s going to be cool. But if you look at a lot of the surveys the level of the questions is very narrow. So to ask somebody if they have a computer today is not necessarily the best question. That will tell you, yeah, some people have computers. But we need to ask questions that get at the capacity of the home computers. The capacity of the computer often dictates the quality of the experience and may narrow the range of activities. The same kinds of questions are being asked over and over. We need to be a lot more sophisticated. In other words if a person bought a computer five years ago they can answer yes when I ask them if they have a home computer. Now whether that’s a functional computer in today’s technology, with all the streaming videos, that’s another question. So you’re not really getting a good measurement out of most of the surveys that are out there.

We need to remember that we have what’s called this convergence. You have digital television and the Internet, all coming together. There’s a whole array of digital products that people need to have access to to keep up. Those surveys are not tracking those convergences and new Digital Divides. The bar is moving very fast and those surveys are not measuring that. What you see is stratification, what we call "cyber segmentation." You have people that might have access to computers, but what they can use those computers for is very variable. If you look at that segmentation you’ll see that there are still strong divides.

I would grant that there is a narrowing of the divide. However, you get to a point where the most needy really don’t have access. They don’t have access to telephones. So what’s their chances of having access to new computers and to the Internet? You have to have access to phones to get to the Internet, or to cable. We find by looking at lower income communities that a lot of times they’ll have a phone for six months and they might not have it for two. Because it’s something that you have to pay for every month. Some segments of our population can not afford this. And the research tells us that that’s actually happening a lot. I think 89% of the population has access to phones. And then within certain communities, like lower income communities, it gets to be lower.

Even though the "Digital Divide" may be narrowing according to some criteria, I would say my definition of the "Digital Divide" is not solely about equipment. And that’s what’s wrong with that definition. The divide is about how you use technology and what you use it for. And that’s where it’s more important. For example, you can get cheaper travel tickets or merchandise if you’re on the Web than if you go to a travel agent. Poorer people need to have the best prices, but they don’t have access to them. That’s really about education and literacy and that’s why I always use an expanded definition of what the "Digital Divide" is. It is having access to the material conditions, which are computers and the phone or cable, or the pipes. But also one needs the skills and knowledge to use this technology. That’s where the "Digital Divide" is connected to prior divides, like class divides, gender divides, and so on. I’ve never particularly liked the term "Digital Divide." Because it tends to focus on the equipment. I think what we’re really talking about is different kinds of forces coming together and phenomena coming together.

SB: How do you see the "Digital Divide" playing out socio-economically?

RC: We have an opportunity through schools, libraries and community technology centers to make a difference. Some youth and their parents have never turned on a computer. They don’t know how to use the mouse. And they need to have a safe place where they can learn. One intervention is to develop community places where people can learn together and become both consumers and producers of new technologies. They can document their own communities, the community voices. They can learn how to do business applications. They can also learn how to do creative things, maybe a newsletter for their church, or Christmas or birthday cards.

For example a gentleman who’s married and whose family lives in Guatemala works as a gardener and a security guard by night. Really he’s not just a gardener, he knows a lot about plants and how they grow. He has enough money to have a credit card. He shops for his family and has the groceries and the goods and the presents delivered to his family in Guatemala. He does it through the Internet. Had he not had this place to go he would never have been able to do that.

What I’m trying to point out is how when some people have access what a difference it makes for them. Communities that don’t have access are not even aware of what they’re missing. They’re not getting all the skills they need in the schools. These populations need to become information fluent. We hear the hype about being in an information economy. So I really do think that there’s a possible gloomy scenario there.

SB: Do you think that there’s a cultural disadvantage for certain people, for example, Latino families who may not prioritize technology?

RC: One part of the divide is the great need to have more information that’s culturally relevant on the Web. And that certainly has been true with Latinos. You have to look at how the information on the Web is supported. It’s not clear to me that relying on the private sector is going to support Latino content in the future. An example of this is LatinoLink. A bunch of journalists built a really nice site for an online magazine. They published letters, and articles about community issues and they had really nice graphics. Well, they became a dot com and they were not able to make it in the commercial world. This year they went under. I wrote to them and asked what had happened to all of their material and I offered to archive it. They responded, "we don’t own anything. We don’t own the name. We don’t own the articles. We have nothing." So all that’s gone. And they don’t even know if anybody’s going to pick it up. I think that the private sector has an important role to play here. But in terms of the documentation of communities, I think that really has to be done by public institutions, whether universities or libraries or museums. This is very, very important.

When people learn technologies they need to see themselves in the technologies. They’ll be able to learn and figure out how it’s related to them. If they can see their own presence it’ll be more important. And I’m not saying that it has to be segregated, but it has to be there. And right now it’s not there enough.

SB: How do you feel about English being the dominant language on the Internet?

RC: A lot of other people that we’ve talked to around the world are concerned about how dominant English on the Web has become. There are translation tools. But I don’t find them very satisfying. They don’t really work for me. There is a report out called The Children’s Partnership at www.childrenspartnership.org. They report content for low-income communities. They point out that there isn't a lot of material that is linguistically relevant or written at the right level for a lot of people to understand. And that it's not culturally relevant to these communities. These are key points. And right now there’s a bill in the California legislature by Manny Martínez. It follows up on this report and asks the state web sites to make their information available in multiple languages.

This plays out in civic participation. In Riverside County they’re using new voting machines. In a way everybody said, this is great because you don’t have the problem with the chads. But when they made this voting machine they didn’t put it in other languages. This is an example of how sometimes when government agencies are integrating new technologies they don’t take into account the communities they serve. And then it has devastating consequences. So it’s not just having the technologies, it’s making sure that they’re relevant in the right language, the right level of accessibility and all of that.

SB: Do you see technology as a liability or asset?

RC: It really depends on how it’s integrated and played out. I wouldn’t say it’s neutral, but I would say that it really depends a lot on how it’s implemented. If you view technology like that, you give it too much power because it’s really how it’s used. Our problems have to do with the way that technology is integrated and used. Technology offers new possibilities, but the very things it offers are maybe the last things that are considered in the way that it’s implemented. A lot of these opportunities are not explored very well, especially by governments.

SB: So in some ways do you feel that the "Digital Divide" is not really the issue?

RC: For me, the eye on the prize is people being productive, building democratic communities and empowering themselves, developing places to learn, to be creative and to address social issues, like poverty. So technology can help us to do that, but we can not see it in a vacuum. We really have to see it as connected to the rest of all of the issues that we face as a society.

SB: How would you sum up your focus on youth and technology?

RC: Having had this opportunity to build a community technology center, what I really want to emphasize, is that in a lot of our society we have these institutions that have become insular. They don’t change. They don’t respond to youth or to different cultural issues. And so they become very dysfunctional or unproductive. But I think that in some of these new technologies there are some spaces that haven’t become stratified yet. And I think what’s most important right now is that we do a lot of experimentation and we allow the space for youth and different cultural minorities and all of these different groups to really be able to share their voices. To make space for that and to use it as a reflection of what we need to talk about and need to address. And so to me that’s what’s most important about all technologies. It’s really the opportunities that this can bring. We must address both the fact that we have social problems and we have institutions that are not responsive. Our part is to create a place where youth can share their creativity and concerns. We will learn a tremendous amount if we listen. That’s where we have to start. I’m concerned about making sure that youth have this opportunity to refashion their social institutions.

SB: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

RC: There is a bill in the state legislature, Bill 1440, to build more community technology centers in low-income communities. People might write their legislators and tell them that they think it’s important. Our governor needs to hear what people need and want in their community. And this bill would offer a hundred thousand dollars a year to help develop centers in communities across the state.

At our site at http://www.ciof.org we have a policy section and in there we have sample letter. Also, you can click here to see bill 1440.

And their voice is so important here. I think a lot of times they think, oh, well, what difference does it make? But I can tell you having testified and having faced a legislator who asks, "Well is there really a problem?" When people stand up and say, "Yes. We don’t have…" legislators say, "Okay. I believe you." I think the important thing about all this is they have to take the ownership of it. It’s kind of like when you did your school newspaper and if you take the ownership then it becomes something else and I think that’s what we need to have youth do. And to share and to do their creative things and to share their art and their music.

Click here to read Richard Chabran's bio.