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Technology Will affect Power and Access Raising a now-common issue, Charles Moran asked in 1998, “Who gets to use the technology? Those with lots and lots of money” (208). Though this is a broad assertion, it echoes a concern noted since Moran’s 1998 statement. Thus, Moran implies, issues of access are and will continue to be “trees” that are often ignored or overlooked in the “forest” of technology, Moran implies. Tharon Howard noted in 1992 that “Tomorrow's computer literates will live in a world where access to electronic information and knowledge is access to power, a world where the gap between the haves and have-nots is widened by the addition of "technological capital…” (online). And just as important as the changing nature of institutional structures and student and faculty identities is the changing nature of gendered identity in technologically mediated e-learning environments. Angela Haas and others claim that “if we fail to move towards greater equity in access and more gender-neutral learning situations when working with technology, women risk being left behind or, at best, risk receiving inadequate preparation in technological literacy” (248). If the learning remains in the same traditional gender modes, she argues, women will continue to be left behind in terms of technological enculturation, as they had been before computer technology made its impact on learning. We think it is important to note, though, that issues of power and access have affected literacy issues since literacy issues have existed. Such issues include deliberate exclusion of genders and cultural or economic groups from literacy, the “ownership” of literacy by social, ruling, and religious elites, the fear of an unruly common populace by early opponents of widespread public education, and the lack or prohibition of access of particular groups to literacy materials, literacy education, and, more recently, computer-based literacy. Issues of power and of access are intertwined; furthermore, power resides not only in the ability to provide access to literacy, but also in the ability to use that provided access. Thus, for example, provision of Internet-ready computers gives basic access, but the accessor’s ability to use that accessible technology (or the ability to take advantage of just-as-easily-accessible instruction in that technology) provides the entry to literacy; simple provision is insufficient. |
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