Letters
May 15 2000
POLARIZED ON THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
I read Daniel Akst's recent column, "Imagining the Digital Divide" [May 1]. I hope no one else did.
His statement, "Is there anyone out there who really believes that the only thing standing between welfare mothers and affluence is an e-mail account?" is so ignorant, arrogant, divisive and misinformed it makes me cringe at the ".edu" that appears after Akst's e-mail address.
The digital divide is about access - access to an education and to jobs that pay a real living wage. Technology is not something poor students should have to wait until high school or college to learn about. We lose talented insight from young people not in a position to buy their way into this future, and we lose by creating an increasingly divided America.
If you feel these high-tech digital tools have so little value, then why don't you ask the students at UC Berkeley to trade them for what some students use in East Palo Alto, Calif.? It's fine for some students to have the very best, but offering these same tools to poor students becomes an issue of e-mail for welfare mothers.
You've done your readers and those who have worked hard to address this widening gulf a disservice. Your closing statement, "Dot-com wealth may be here today and gone tomorrow - just like the digital divide," is a sad reflection on the true size of the issue. The issue, unfortunately, is not a passing or momentary focus of attention. To some, it's a growing and troubling sign that the American Dream is just that for too many.
John N. Pasmore
Senior VP of Operations
Urban Box Office Network
I live in a section of Brooklyn, N.Y., where corner stores make a living selling liquor, loose cigarettes, blunts and other things. Where cops shine the spotlight from overhead helicopters around neighborhood apartments. An area where a large portion of the youth's aspirations in life appears to be to smoke the best weed.
Having said that, I've been observing all the talk by our politicians and politico-wannabes about the digital divide. From one in the heart of this so-called divide, it's a made-up lie.
You can walk into the Wiz in downtown Brooklyn and get a PC for free if you sign up for Internet access. If you don't want to do that, you can get one for around $500 or less.
If those in this "digital divide" can have $100-plus shoes and the clothes of multimillionaire rap artists, if they can have expensive stereos that keep my son awake at night, if they can have the latest Lexus double-parked on the street, then I'm sure if they wanted they could have a computer.
I know there's an economic and social divide, a huge one. Kids born to kids, children killing children, drugs invading homes. What the government should be doing is not doling out computers to poor kids and tax breaks to rich companies, but giving sustainable hope to our underdeveloped citizens so that all have the chance for a decent level of food, clothing and shelter.
Instead of these companies giving away technology, why not give funds to economically develop the "digitally divided" in our country?
Ramon Ray
Editor and analyst
Smallbiztechnology.com
Thank you for the excellent piece on the so-called digital divide and the current flow of hardware and software to schools hard-pressed for basic reading materials in the first place.
I'm from the Bahamas, and when not consulting with new-media companies on the Left Coast, I have been at work building a series of computer centers in the Bahamas and Caribbean. So I readily recognize that the digital divide is less about black vs. white or primary socioeconomic numbers than it is about education being a community priority. Period.
Kimberly King-Burns
Partner and CEO
Convergenz/Solutions
H-1BS A BOUNTY FOR TECH INDUSTRY
I read with interest your May 8 article, "Huddled Masses Yearning to Write Java." Although I am originally from India, I am beginning to smell something fishy about the H-1B visas granted to foreign high-tech workers.
My son is a sophomore at University of Michigan, majoring in computer science. You would think that with [it] being one of the top universities, all the computer science majors would be swamped with summer internship offers, especially in light of the shortage of high-tech workers.
Surprise, surprise! Only a handful of the sophomores have managed to get internships in the computer field. The rest will be working odd jobs.
I am beginning to believe more that American companies don't hire local candidates because they can easily get thousands of high-tech workers who are willing to work at much lower rates. ... American engineers, scientists and programmers are simply lost in the shuffle.
Pradeep Srivastava
Process Engineering Manager
Detroit Water & Sewage Department
GOING DOT-COM? GET A LAWYER
"What to Name the Baby?" [April 24] did your readers a disservice by omitting to mention the importance of doing full trademark clearance before starting to use a domain name to identify one's goods or services.
Indeed, the article conveyed the opposite impression by saying "it's easier to obtain a trademark patent," when there is no such thing, "than it is to secure a good domain name." Even if a particular domain is available, without doing proper clearance a startup may well find itself facing a suit for trademark infringement, trademark dilution and/or a mandatory arbitration proceeding, not to mention investor claims for breach of warranty. Searching the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's online database isn't enough to ensure that a name is free for use here. That database covers only federal registrations and applications. Even someone without a federal registration can bring suit for infringement.
A full search, which covers federal, state and common-law databases, is essential. Given that the Internet transcends national borders, a startup would be well advised also to do searches in as many countries as it can afford, or at least in those countries where it will have offices and where it could be subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign court.
Jessica R. Friedman, Esq.
Reboul, MacMurray, Hewitt,
Maynard & Kristol
Editor Jane Goldman replies:
Ms. Friedman is right; we meant to say "trademark registration." In addition, we were incorrect in our account of the naming of Livent; Landor Associates did not participate.
FINANCIAL ENGINEERING'S FOR REAL
In "The End of the Beginning" [April 17], you comment on the "creative accounting" by dot-coms to make their financials look good as "financial engineering."
Well, it turns out that financial engineering is a branch of finance involving things like valuation of equity options - puts, calls, etc. - and minimization of risk in markets. It involves solving the Black-Scholes equation and other things of that ilk.
Warren Eastman
Financial engineering student
ERRATA
"When Heads Roll" [May 15] misstated the cost of Value America 's layoffs at the end of last year. The total was $2.7 million.
"DoubleClick's Endurance Test" [May 8] inaccurately reported the online agency's earnings. Its overall first-quarter revenue was $110.1 million; DoubleClick made $60.2 million in advertising revenue that same period.
An editing error in "Huddled Masses Yearning to Write Java" [May 8] distorted the number of H-1B applicants who work as electrical engineers. Although 30 percent of such applicants claim to have master's degrees, fewer than 5 percent end up as electrical engineers.