Andrea on how the schism in technology surprises

I could make a list of a thousand things that have surprised me in one way or another here, but I just want to point out one right now – technology. The pace of evolution of technology in the computer era today is crazy to think about – at least the pace in the United States. When I was around six, I got a massive off-white desktop in my room– I used to play Put-Put Saves the Zoo and Freddie Fish – and as I grew older I used it to learn how to type on Microsoft Word, I played Harry Potter PC games, I used the internet to check my AOL email address and I instant-messaged with my friends (from TaPdAnCeR67) on aim. Over time my family transitioned through many computers; our monitors grew smaller, we got Wi-Fi and there was no more need for Ethernet cables, the computer machine eventually melded into laptops for all of us, and now we can walk around with our smartphones connected to our home network too. I’ve taken the evolution for granted and the costs of high-speed internet, the machines themselves, the anti-virus software, programs for school like Microsoft Office – I considered everything to be a fixed cost in my life because I can’t imagine not being connected. I worked at a library in high school, but I can’t imagine having to look in a book every time I have a question to find the answer – or a dictionary to find out how to spell a word. I wouldn’t be able to hand-write half the assignments I had in high school without getting severe tendonitis or carpal tunnel. I’ve been trying to think about what life would be like without computers and it’s incredibly difficult to even imagine, but one word that keeps coming to mind is slower.

I’ve heard plenty of people critique my generation for our need for instant gratification. “How late is Bertucci’s open?” “Do I take this exit or the next one?” “What other movies was he in? He looks so familiar” I’m not denying it – anyone that listens to us Millennial’s talk to one another for five minutes will know: it is true. And we don’t just ask questions constantly – we ask them on the go.  The way we live our lives, we need our email to come with us because “what if my advisor emails me during class and I don’t get back to her until I got back to my dorm?” – We fear being disconnected. FOMO (fear of missing out) doesn’t just apply to experiences like climbing Lion’s Head during the full moon – we fear not hearing about the big news at the same time as everyone else. I didn’t know that Oscar Pistorious ‘murdered’ his girlfriend until at least 24 hours after the fact – my friends in Connecticut knew before me – and it was unnerving. Not because there was a major murder case in the same country I’m studying abroad in (there’s plenty of murders each week) – but because I felt almost entitled to hear that news first. Shouldn’t I be the one telling them?

It makes me feel like I’m studying more than 7,000 miles away. I feel like I’m five or ten years behind my friends – certainly not seven hours ahead. Perspective is everything though – because to native South Africans around us, the Internet is as fast as it’s ever been, computers are huge desktops where I work in Khayelitsha, and a select few people have laptops, but the two machines (which to me feel like they should be separated by at least a decade) coexist peacefully and the sight of one next to another is perfectly normal.

I still haven’t gotten over the fact that the Internet ‘goes out’ sometimes (like power during a severe storm in the US), or fully grasped the fact that everything I do online involves a certain amount of data – which is measured and charged for at most internet cafes. My iPhone is grandfathered into my unlimited data plan, and I’ve never had to think about how much data I use when I surf the web. I’ve always been able to satisfy my curiosity relatively instantly by Google-ing anything that crosses my mind. So are my fellow twenty-something’s addicted to instant-gratification? Maybe.

After six weeks here, I can say that it’s definitely hard to function without it. Not just for my own reasons, like uploading photos to Facebook or trying to Skype home – those are frustrating – but trying to design brochures, pamphlets and posters at work within the township (at a very nice office considering its surroundings) feels impossible. First of all, I didn’t even know clip art still existed – but beyond that, who knew the library of images was so small? There hasn’t been anything useful for me that I’ve found in it yet and using the Internet to find images has been painful it takes so long. Copying and pasting each image (because it takes way too long to save it) and then formatting each one is a seriously tedious process. I’ve only been using Word to design the marketing materials because it’s the fastest of the programs on the computers at work because something like Publisher or Photoshop even dealing with medium-sized image files just seems out of the question… That’s all been my experience here – and most of that is just commentary on the past two days – but the thing that baffles me the most is the fact that this is how the entirety of the country functions.

The computers in public schools (IF they have computers) are few-and-far-between, computers in homes are almost entirely non-existent for the millions living in townships – even computers at workplaces aren’t guaranteed. I want to be clear that I’m not mourning the schism in need for instant gratification between youth in the states and youth here in South Africa - I’m baffled by how the way students and teachers – and the population at large – learns here at all. The country’s technology may be only five or ten years behind the states (this is my opinion – a very subjective average of all the technology I’ve witnessed) but the education system here seems like it’s ten or twenty years behind the US – and that’s on top of all the other problems South African school systems face too.

It’s hard for me to function here because I know what the Internet can be like. I know how what powers the Internet gives you as a student – or even just as a citizen – the ability to answer questions that cross your mind and satisfy curiosity. Multiple times a day here I find myself making a mental note to Google things when I get home because I’ll think of a question that no one around me can answer (and 9 times out of 10 I’ll forget to look it up later), but although it tends to get labeled as “need for instant gratification”, my generation’s thirst for information isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s seems obvious to me that the power to communicate with anyone anywhere anytime has helped human kind progress faster over the past twenty-five years than anything else over just a quarter century. We may do less internal processing as we type somewhat obvious questions into Google so we can just have them answered quickly – but my generation (and all those with access to high speed internet) is probably the most educated and aware demographic on the planet.

At this point, I don’t think it’s melodramatic to say that access to high-speed Internet is absolutely crucial to human, community and global development.  I’ve witnessed and experienced the lack of access, and though I know spreading access to high-speed Internet probably would help the country and people progress – it’s not a priority here – and it can’t be. The vast majority of people living in Khayelitsha (where I work) don’t have running water in their “homes” (jerry-rigged shacks) – that means no toilet and no sink. So while increasing access to Internet seems like a great idea, the fact of the matter is that people are still living in quasi-medieval conditions and though it would be exciting to have a laptop in a one-room informal settlement – it really doesn’t make sense to prioritize over access to water and sanitation.  

The schism in technology surprises me because I’ve witnessed a lot of the evolution of computers in my own home, but the schism it creates in education and opportunity is more profound. This past weekend as we learned about human rights and the right to education and opportunity, I found myself wondering if a country could justify itself as one that upholds those rights when not all its citizens (especially children in school) have Internet access. The Internet seems like such a superficial luxury when compared to water and basic sanitation, but when I consider how to actually solve the problem of poverty (and break the cycle), giving people Internet devices and access doesn’t seem like that outrageous of an idea, because if education really is the answer – I’d be inclined to say that you can’t get a quality education without the Internet – at least in today’s world.