ii.

I took Jennifer and MK's photo and combined them to continue Jennifer's discussion of the digital divide--and in a broader perspective, the rich-poor gap--and expand on how these concepts apply to us as college students.

 

One of the things I've noticed about Los Angeles since being here is how quickly the scenery turns from pretty palm trees and million dollar houses to dirty, neglected shacks. There's clearly something wrong with this picture, yet very little is done about it. One reason for that is how sheltered being on a college campus can be. USC isn't the nicest campus in the world, but it's still pretty and has a lot to offer. As a freshman without a car, it is very easy to stay on campus for days without even noticing I haven't met anyone or gone anywhere not associated with USC in days. But where do the dining hall workers go when their shift is over? What is happening in the areas we are learning about in our textbooks? How do we lessen the displacement to the surrounding community that comes with such a large institution as USC? If something feels distant and irrelevant, it's hard to care about it, and this is definitely how everything past this campus can feel most of the time. Even the surrounding community can be avoided by simply ignoring its presence. But, as illustrated in the digital divide, those of us lucky enough to have access to a college education and the mobility our school encourages have a responsibility to help minimize the digital divide--as we learned with Craig Detrich in the last class. We are not being sent out into the "real world" after earning our degree to widen the problems already in existence today. As the recent Occupy movements have shown, people are ready for a change, a solution. And although there is no clear solution yet, as members of the digital culture and an educated body, we can use the tools available to us to their full extent to realize what is happening outside our windows and get out there and fix the problems we see.

Done