Does the culture marginalize the poor and technologically illiterate. And why?

I'm looking at how in our society, where things are driven by consumerism, there are subconscious effects left on the populace. I was always wondering why there seemed to be a development of inferiority complexes among students and even adults, whereas in areas such as New York or Philadelphia, this does not occur. So I've been postulating ideas off of this.

I think it comes down to culture and money. I'll start with money. In areas of greater economic wealth there seems to be more of an equilibrium. Everybody has exactly what everybody else has and therefore less people fall victim to feelings of economic inferiority, which is something I see a great deal of in rural communities. This economic inferiority complex has a greatly negative backlash effect in that those with money begin to act with arrogance and superiority, little aristocracies begin to form. So I wonder if this is a subconscious behavior or if these behaviors are actively executed? In essence, do people subconsciously embrace elitism and aristocracy?

What I'm talking about is the sections of America that cannot afford products that are conducive to communication and therefore fall victim to being blocked out of these points of access to the culture. This is where I see an issue. A subconscious inferiority complex forms among them, and these people are seen as less valid to the culture. They are also ridiculed by the culture. This is why we use words like Rednecks, mountain-folk and ghetto trash.

Thus, I think that certain elements of technology should be universal, especially internet access. The grid should be available for everyone, seeing as it is an information resource. Of course there's no way anyone would pay for it, especially when people these days have been talking about having government do less for the less.

Yet, it advances the culture. I'm not a socialist, seeing as I don't see the possibility of economic equality. I know people will always want to find way to make more money than someone else. However I do believe in meritocratic equality, which means everybody gets a fair chance and then they are given the ability to advance based on their own drive. Thus, I figure that there is no reason to push people out based on their lack of access to the culture. We could be losing great minds.

And that is the danger of building aristocracies and systems of elitism. We push the potentially brilliant out.



In order to further make the point, it would seem high technology or gadgetry has become a rat race fetish. And those restricted from the technologies, possibly through a lack of finances, are pushed out of the system due to their proverbial loss in the rat race. They are seen as the losers. And they show signs of having an economic inferiority complex as a result. Whereas the members of the society that can afford said technologies are seen as the winners. And they often act as aristocrats as a result.

In the past, much of the technology that was more expensive, was more expensive due to higher quality. However, now we live in a world were most goods are made in low cost factories. As a result, higher price is now a result of more complicated technology being added into the product. Basically, everything is cheap now. And it is the rat race mentality that is the only thing supporting the artificial inflation in price.

So really, our society is just living in a delusion where people are hurting each other through what products they can afford. They are lulled into this system of elitism that has been in existence from a time when products actually had quality. But today, most products are truly valued at next to nothing.

Let's Be a Democracy Again!

I think it's we become a Democracy again. It's time to rebuild. It's time to start talking again. I've decided to work for getting people to do this. I've decided to work for getting people thinking about big things again. I see how our culture has fallen apart since then. Thus, it's time for all of us to rebuild. This is about more than social justice and fighting against corporate power, it's about getting back our culture of teamwork, unity and respect for each other. My generation has to pick up the torch. So I'm going to start.

Google brings Information Literacy

I deal with information retrieval all day and with services like iGoogle or MyYahoo, it is wonderful to instantaneously be piped into my research, news, blogs, email and calendar. But I like it so much I brought it into the classroom. I often have students of various majors asking how to find information on a whole variety of topics. And I used to dig through the library subscription services and then domain limit Google to retrieve academic information.

However, I work with some younger innovative professors who want the students to embrace Web 2.0 technologies and use them to aid in academic research. So I taught a class in which I showed the students how to use their iGoogle home pages as a means to catch RSS feeds on academic topics from our library subscription services, pickup blogs from reputable sources and even pull relevant news sources all into the iGoogle pages. I think this is revolutionary because it fundamentally changes academic research. It has led to conditions in which there is less information research and retrieval and more information mining and analysis.

This delves into a new field of instruction called information literacy. And iGoogle has given us a tangible information retrieval system, which we can then use in our instruction of information literacy. Hey, let’s design a Google curriculum. An ancillary benefit to automated information retrieval is that people tend to click on information they find interesting. Maybe we could also plug the data into Google Trends, and have a real-time Zeitgeist meter for trends in respective fields.