Story Five: Left Out In the Cold in D.C.
"The people who aren’t connected are losing… It's a quality of life issue. On some levels, it might even be a survival issue."
It’s the type of cold that makes people’s shoulders hunch up while they walk, shielding against the piercing, bitter gusts. D.C. resident Ferman Fletcher spent the day on a roof working, exposed to the weather like clothes on a line. His hands are splattered with dried paint and adhesives, and it looks like he’s given up trying to scrub them free.
A seasoned carpenter, Ferman’s real passion is music, but up until a few months ago, he never thought he could make a serious go at being a musician – that is, until he discovered the Internet.
After stumbling upon a flier for an introductory training class on computers and the Web – the Boot-Up Camp offered at the People’s Media Center – Ferman enrolled. The center is a grassroots community organization working to empower disadvantaged and disenfranchised people in the D.C. metro area through media training. Upon graduating, everyone in the class will get a free computer.
As Ferman began to get more confident exploring the Internet, a light bulb went off: The Internet could help him radically change his life.
“If I can pursue this music thing in earnest in my spare time, that’s a possibility that I won’t have to do the carpentry on much of a full-time basis.”
Already, he’s created his own Web site: “I punch that joint into any computer anywhere, anytime, and it’s my Web site. It’s thrilling.”
He’s been quickly learning how to record his own songs and spread them across the Web.
“It’s the possibilities that someone, somewhere, however remote that place may be, may see something that I have to offer and be interested in it,” he says. “You’re not just limited to the block or two that you live in, or the city, or even the state.”
Relying on public computers
Although Ferman is excited – “The Internet has opened me up to a whole new world” – he faces a serious limitation: He can’t afford high-speed Internet in his home. It’s simply too expensive. And while he could subscribe to cheaper dial-up service, almost all of the applications on the Internet today demand a high-speed connection.
Instead, Ferman has to rely on the community center and the public library to get online, his music dream dependent on when these places are open, and computers are available. And that’s not always easy, considering that thousands of other people across D.C. face the same situation, priced out of a service that has become a necessity.
In D.C. alone, 240,000 people do not have high-speed Internet access at home, while 160,000 have no access at all. In the shadow of the Capitol, where decisions are being made about creating a national broadband plan, the digital divide is glaring.
And the effects of having a two-tiered nation – divided between those who have high-speed Internet, and those who don’t – are having dramatic repercussions in the city and across the country.
“It’s a negative situation when you have that many people excluded from what so many others have access to,” Ferman says. “You have segregation, basically, and it’s just not fair.”
The losing half
Young entrepreneur Sahil Sinha has been working to level the playing field in D.C., starting the organization INO Solutions and creating the Boot-Up Camp that Ferman attended. Like Ferman, Sahil sees the digital divide leaving some people out in the cold.
“The people who aren’t connected are losing,” Sahil says. “They don’t have the same opportunities afforded to those who are connected; they don’t have the same pleasures that the people who are connected have. It’s a quality of life issue. On some levels, it might even be a survival issue.”
With the unemployment rate reaching 9.3 percent in D.C. in January, Sahil sees the Internet as a revolutionary tool to revive local economies, create unprecedented opportunity, and give overlooked communities a voice.
“[The Internet] connects people,” he says, “and that’s one of the major functions of any business, being able to connect and get one product from one person to the people who need it.”
Yet in order for everyone to be able to capitalize on the Internet, Sahil says the government needs to step in to create fast, affordable and universal broadband.
“It’s part of our infrastructure,” he says. “We need our roads, and we need our information superhighway.”
