From the [A-List]:
DRAFT ******************************
Social Informatics of the Black Experience: The Emergence of a Research
Literature
Abdul Alkalimat, University of Toledo
Summer 2006
The rise of new fields for academic research and public policy frequently
follow major sociotechnological change (Bernal 1954; Mumford 1934). This has
been true for many technologies including the printing press, automobile,
telephone, television, telescope, and microscope. This is also true for
computers
and related information technologies. We are in the birth process of a
networked society, an information society, a third wave of revolutionary social
transformation following the agricultural and industrial revolutions (Jones
1990; Toffler 1980; Attali 1991; Webster 1995; Castells 1996). The field of
social informatics has emerged to focus on the transformative impact and social
functioning of information technologies on and in society (Kling 1999).
The focus of this review essay is on how an emerging literature is
presenting initial empirical findings and conceptual approaches to the Black
experience in this context. The critical questions are the following: How and
in what
ways do Black people have access to IT (information technologies, including
computers)? What do Black people do with computers and what do they do when
they are online? What Black experience has been digitized and is currently the
‘
stuff’ of Black virtual reality in cyberspace? How does the virtual Black
experience impact the actual Black experience and vice versa? What can be the
meaning of Black liberation in cyberspace?
We have advanced the term ‘eBlack Studies’ to refer to the transformation
of the academic field of Black Studies based on the new information te
chnologies (Alkalimat 2001, 2004, and see also _http://www.eblackstudies.org_
(http://www.eblackstudies.org) ). We have been concerned with eBlack pedagogy
and
collaborative action research strategies. This article is a review of the
emerging research literature that reveals key aspects of the sociology of
eBlack
studies: alternative methods and corresponding datasets, empirical findings
and theoretical summations, policy considerations and action agendas.
Background in Science and Struggle
On the heels of the civil rights victories of the 1960s, when the illusion
emerged that Black progress represented the end of racism, the concepts of
class and class conflict were resurrected to describe new data on Blacks who
remained at the bottom of or at the margins of society. A leading academic
promoting this approach has been the sociologist William J. Wilson.
Alternatively, rooted in the radical Black tradition, activist intellectuals
outside the
academy have raised their voices as well, such as Nelson Peery (USA) and John
LaRose (Trinidad/England).
Wilson made a signal contribution to launch a new era of social research and
theory building that brought class back into theoretical discourse (Wilson
1978, 1987, 1996). However, two major issues led to a broad and polemical
debate (Washington 1979; Katz 1992; Jencks 1993; Lawson 1992; Moore &
Pinderhughes 1993; Massey & Denton 1993). First, Wilson described a trend he
called ‘the
declining significance of race.’ Second, Wilson noted that the new social
forces he identified in the 1970s had produced an economically marginalized
group he named the “underclass. He subsequently abandoned this term for the
phrase ‘truly disadvantaged,’ which reflected his rediscovery of racism as
pervasively encoded in the social structure. Wilson anchored his work in the
process of the de-industrialization of cities and the development of what I call
the ‘forbidden zones of American apartheid.’ He focuses on the aggregation of
social problems into a ‘concentration effect’ that destroys communities by
forcing them into ‘social isolation.’ Essentially, Wilson had honed in on the
dystopian aspect of the birth of the information society. In this sense his
work needs to be placed alongside that of Castells, Jones, Rifkin, Toffler,
and others who discuss the social polarities that characterize the birth of
the information society.
Outside of the academy, Black radicals began to address these issues as part
of a systemic transformation of society on a level comparable to the
nineteenth-century changes that led to industrial capitalism. Peery and his
colleagues advanced a theory about technological revolution based on the end of
the
old assembly-line industrial economy and the emergence of the new economy.
This can be thought of as basically the move from the system of Ford to that
initiated by Toyota, with the latter’s use of computers and robots to create
such new innovations as lean production, just-in-time inventory, and the team
system (Peery 1992, 1993). Peery (1993) uses as his theoretical point of
departure a famous insight by Karl Marx:
At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of
society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is
but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within
which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the
productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch
of social revolution. (Marx 1970/1859, p. 21)
La Rose, originally an activist intellectual from Trinidad and later an
established publisher and bookstore owner based in London, had earlier
developed
compatible ideas about a class-based fight that reflects the potential of the
new technologies (Alleyne 2002; White et al. 2005). He argued that just as
with the fight for the 8-hour work day within the industrial system, the new
period of the information society will result in the fight to shorten the
working day once again to provide even more time for rest, recreation, and
creativity to enhance the social life of the toilers. His argument is that new
tools and the virtual elimination of labor-intensive industries will lead to a
fight to reorganize production to shorten the working day and the working life.
This is a position summed up by Marx:
Hence it is that in the history of capitalist production, the determination
of what is a working day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a
struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and
collective labor, i.e., the working class. (Marx 1887, p. 235)
La Rose and his colleagues have been particularly concerned with the
emergence of a new (forced) leisure class of former workers now de-linked from
employment on a more or less permanent basis. Their position was stated in a
1985
publication for their annual book fair:
The post-war world has been passing through an historical period of
automation and computerization of the labor process. This has resulted in the
mass
displacement of workers on a permanent scale only glimpsed historically before
in colonial societies. What have those displaced in the past created and what
will they now create? The main forum of the Fourth Book Fair and Book Fair
Festival will therefore focus on ‘New Technology, the Working Day and Cultural
Creativity.’ (reprinted in White et al. 2005, p. xxx)
In sum, the last third of the twentieth century reveals a negation, the
birth pains of the new society as the old society is being destroyed. A body of
research literature in the social sciences and the humanities focused on this
process is growing. eBlack studies arises out of this context. Our focus is
now shifting, from destruction to construction, so we are now developing a
literature, eBlack studies, that analyses the Black experience within the new
information society.
Rise of a Research Literature
This review essay focuses on 23 book-length treatments of eBlack, the Black
experience and the revolution in information technology. Our focus on
information technology cannot be entirely separated from a more general
concern for
all forms of technology. We need to read technology back into Black
intellectual history. These authors and books are not in conscious dialogue
yet, in
part because the authors are still fighting to break out of limited
disciplinary networks. We need a hypertext literature that ignores these
inherited
limits and boldly moves to create new networks based on methods, empirical and
theoretical analysis, strategy and tactics for policy guidelines, and action
agendas. These authors are like people in a circle turned away from each other,
facing outward, talking to other people, other networks. This review is a
call for people to turn and face each other, to realize that productive
discourse awaits us as a network of researchers in the area of eBlack studies.
In
general, this will be a necessary dynamic to invigorate and diversify the
general field of social informatics.
Each of these 23 books pays attention to a key focus of eBlack studies; each
can be thought of as advancing a major thesis on the nature of the eBlack
experience. Of course all of the books are broader than this, and consequently
overlap to an extent. They also tend to confirm the four theses which form
the overall framework of the work being done in this emerging field.
The social polarization thesis: Alkalimat et al. (1995), Jennings
(1995/1996), Mack (2001) and Green (2001). The basic argument is that the social
dynamics of the birth of the information revolution produced a digital divide
that
was exacerbated by a preexisting social divide.
The Afrocentric thesis: Battle & Harris (1996), Jenkins & Om-Ra Set (1997),
Eglash (1999), Sobol (2002), Nelson (2002), Alkalimat (2004), Sinclair
(2004), and Pursell (2005). The argument is that Black culture is a basis for
participating in the information revolution.
The anti-racist thesis: Ebo (1998), Kolko et al. (2000), Chinn (2000),
Nakamura (2002), and Kevorkian (2006). This argument is that racism in society
and
cyberspace impacts identity and cultural practices.
The cyberpower thesis: Barber & Tait (2001), Nelson et al. (2001), Nuwere &
Chanoff (2002), Williams (2003), Alkalimat (2004), and Banks (2006). The
argument is that Black people can change physical space and cyberspace by
acting
virtually.
Each of these theses can be found in empirical research and theoretical
formulations. In general, all four aspects link cyberspace-based virtual reality
to our actual lived experiential reality. This literature is just emerging,
usually in collections of articles, and is tentative and suggestive, exciting
and path-breaking.
The Social Polarization Thesis
Job?Tech (Alkalimat et al. 1995) marks the beginning of the eBlack studies
literature and anchors it in the social changes associated with this new
revolution in information technology. The ‘Job?Tech’ conference pointed to the
differential impact of technological innovation on different sectors of
society, as well as alternative scenarios of prosperity and poverty. In this
volume
the birth of the new society is clearly defined as one of destruction
simultaneous with construction. At every point there were Black people coming
into
the dialogue, and at every point the experience of the most marginalized Black
people was kept at the center of the discussion. As a Black studies scholar
activist, I was the main organizer of the conference.
This book contains conference proceedings that include 20 plenary
presentations and discussions, as well as summations of over 50 people speaking
in 17
workshops over three days at the University of Illinois-Chicago. The
conference plan united the community (employed and unemployed workers, community
activists, and youth) with scientists (computer specialists, molecular
biologists,
engineers, and social scientists), the creators of science and technology
with those who experience the social impact of these innovations. In particular
the conference was intended to give voice to those at the bottom of society
who are rarely consulted concerning how things are done, what technology is
made, and how it is applied to the society and their lives. The purpose of
this conference is stated in the introduction to Job?Tech:
The scientists are in their laboratories, the educators are in schools, and
people are in their homes and on their jobs (if they aren’t homeless and if
they are employed). In each setting there is discussion, sometimes guided by
scientific information and sometimes by the popular media but too often limited
by the urgency of the situation: a workplace automating, budgets being cut,
a company downsizing, and so on. What is not occurring is a broad and
democratic dialogue to sum up what is going on and how we can direct things
toward a
future that maximizes freedom and economic well-being for everyone.
(Alkalimat et al. 1995, pp. 1-2)
Jeremy Rifkin gave the conference keynote address. He argues that there is a
polarity in every society.
The top 20 % are hooked into the knowledge sector and the global village.
They’re producing and consuming for each other. The bottom 80 % are out of the
loop. They’re on the outside of that electronic village trying to get in.
Most never will. So the reality is that working people around the world face a
common threat and a common opportunity as we move into the first decades of the
twenty-first century. (Alkalimat et al. 1995, p. 16)
One chapter in his book, The End of Work, is focused on the Black experience
in this regard. He states:
Today, millions of African Americans find themselves hopelessly trapped in a
permanent underclass. Unskilled and unneeded, the commodity value of their
labor has been rendered virtually useless by the automated technologies that
have come to displace them in the new high-tech global economy. (Rifkin 1995,
p. l80)
However, in his analysis does not end up in dystopia but dialectics:
One the one hand, it has the possibility of tremendous dislocation and
disintegration of the social fabric in every country. On the other hand, this
technology could free us, could create a renaissance for civilization in the
coming decade. What we need is a political moment for a debate, and that debate
centers around this question: how do we share the great productivity gains in
this technology revolution with all people? (Alkalimat et al. 1995, p. 17)
Our conference was part of such a debate. One plenary presentation consisted
of leading science scholars discussing cutting-edge work: engineering design
based on virtual reality for research and development, the socio-technical
makeover of a library into an information service center, computers in
production agriculture, and the production applications of molecular biology.
The
next plenary presentation consisted of reports from people who are being
marginalized in part by the social consequences resulting from how these new
technologies are being used: a former mayor of a postindustrial city, a
striking
worker from the food-processing industry, an autoworker facing downsizing, and
an immigrant Latino worker. This volume contains presentations from both
scientists and community activists. The final two plenary sessions dealt with
short-term local and long-term global solutions.
One of the driving social concerns that led to this conference was the
crisis facing the knowledge worker, a crisis within the information revolution.
Prof Jonathan King, professor of biology at MIT, drew attention to this crisis
in New England, a crisis that affects graduates of MIT as well. He
established the framework for the initial conference on ‘Technology and
Employment’
held at MIT (January 1994) that led to the Chicago conference (March 1995).
Through this process we networked with key hubs of activity, including the
Communications Workers of America, the Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility, cy. Rev: A Journal for Technology, Sustainable Socialism, and
Radical
Democracy, and a similar conference being sponsored by the Department of
Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. All of
these
intellectual hubs were linked into the conference. (Key theorists from all
this continue to be Stanley Aronowitz, Jerry Harris, and Carl Davidson.)
‘The Information Society and Communities of Color’ (Jennings 1996) is a
special issue of The Trotter Review, a journal published by The William Monroe
Trotter Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. This issue is a
monograph-length collection of articles about issues facing people of color
concerning cyberspace, namely ‘how to access, and manage, and control,
significant facets and processes associated with the information highway,’
(Jennings
1996, p. 3). J. Jennings, the editor, defines the digital divide in terms of
technology and social power: ‘The issue of “have and have-not” involves much
more than mere access to this new form of technology. It also includes
issues related to the management and control of resources of the information
highway.’ (Jennings 1996, p. 3).
Public computing is a connecting theme in this collection. On the basis of a
1995 survey of Boston Black community residents, Jennings concludes that ‘
the linkage between public schools, community based organizations, and the
general public is a vital one in expanding access and broad understanding of
computer and information technology,’ (Jennings 1996, p. 21). M. Roberts, in
this
same volume, makes a similar point: ‘If inner city communities are to catch
up to speed with the rest of the country in fully utilizing computer
technology, community-based organizations will have to become one of the focal
points
for introducing this resource into their community,’ (Jennings 1996, p. 25).
A critical perspective on global policy is presented by Nelson Mandela whose
essay opens the Jennings volume:
If more than half the world is denied access to the means of communication,
the people of developing countries will not be fully part of the modern
world. For in the twenty-first century, the capacity to communicate will almost
certainly be a key human right. Eliminating the distinction between information
rich and information poor countries is also critical to eliminating economic
and other inequalities between North and South, and to improving the quality
of life of all humanity. (Jennings 1996, p. 4)
Mack (2001) presents a comprehensive introductory survey of historical
reasons for the digital divide, its current impact, and proposals for its
solution. She argues that the digital divide is based on a long-standing and
justified fear of science and technology based on the historical examples of
science
under slavery, the pseudoscience of IQ testing, and the infamous Tuskegee
experiment during which the US government’s sanctioned and funded research used
600 Black men in Alabama (1930s) without their consent as test subjects to
study the long-term impact of syphilis. In addition, she discusses historical
inequities in the economy and educational opportunities. The impact of the
digital divide is discussed in terms of communication and networking,
e-commerce, and e-government. She proposes an emphasis on public computing as a
solution, specifically the development of community access centers. She
discusses
these centers by reviewing the initiatives of the federal government,
specifically HUD and the Department of Education, and the centers that make up
the
national network of CTCNet.
Green (2001) breaks new ground in a study of Black workers in the telephone
industry. This study is of a working-class experience mediated by the
structural factors of race and gender in a foundational aspect of the
information
revolution:
The telephone industry constructed an image of white womanhood that excluded
Black women and simultaneously inhibited the development of a feminist
working-class consciousness among white women. This book argues that white
women’s
acceptance of a white identity in effect contributed to Bell System
management’s ability to control the work and the workplace. (Green 2001, p. 3)
The technological transformation of the telephone industry is presented in
three stages: mechanization (1878--1920), automation (1920--60), and
computerization (1960--80). In the 1930s there were no Black telephone
operators, but ‘
[f]inally, in December 1944, the New York Telephone Company hired the first
Black operators in the Bell System,’ (Green 2001, p. 210). The impact of
technology on this industry is one of the most dramatic cases of technological
downsizing, with Black people being brought into the industry precisely at the
moment when it was under greatest stress:
In less than 10 years African American operators replaced white operators in
the major cities as a result of a hiring policy that segregated most of the
African American women into one department and one kind of job.… In effect,
as soon as job opportunities opened for Black women, computerization and
occupational segregation closed them. Between 1960 and 1981, women operators in
the Bell System decreased by one half. (Green 2001, p. 227)
Green is critical of the union’s role in the experience of Black women and
women in general in the telephone industry. Specifically, the issues about
which she is most concerned are ‘technological deskilling and degradation of
operators’ work.’ Furthermore, she is equally unimpressed by the federal
government’s role: ‘For women and minorities, especially Black women, the
federal
government’s supervision of the telephone industry contributed to the
continuation of the Bell System’s policy of racial and sexual segregation in the
workplace,’ (Green 2001, p. 257).
Overall, Alkalimat presents a general conceptual framework for social
polarization to sum up the various divides that structure the contradictions
at the
birth of the information society:
‘The five revolutionary processes that define the twenty-first century are
as follows:
Technological revolution: the transformation of tools and techniques based
on the computer and biotechnology;
Economic revolution: the transformation of the workplace, and the resultant
economic polarization toward extremes of wealth and poverty, from the wealthy
to the homeless;
Social revolution: the destruction of public institutions connected to
industrial society, the privatization of social life, and the polarization of
social environments from gilded gated high-tech suburbs, to inner-city
forbidden
zones;
Political revolution: the destruction of the welfare state and an emerging
struggle between conservatism and the creation of a police state versus the
expansion of economic security and democratic rights for everyone; and
Spiritual revolution: the end of the old American dream and the emerging battle
between the fatalistic hedonism of a consumer society and a hopeful vision
rooted
in collective rituals of celebration and mobilization to build a new future.’
(Jennings 1995/1996, p. 37)
This social polarization thesis became a focus of a widespread public policy
debate that engaged government and civil society, namely, the digital divide
debate. This debate has led to three formulations of the polarity crisis:
the digital divide, digital opportunity, and digital inequality. Herein we have
the respective conceptualizations of macrosociological theory, public policy,
and empirical research.
The Afrocentric Thesis
Two important publications from MIT Press argue critical points about
African American autonomous contributions both as cultural retentions from
Africa
and within their working experience with different kinds of technology.
Sinclair (2004) states that ‘white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Americans made
technology…central to (the)…way they represented themselves. Just as plainly
they
contrasted themselves to people of color, whom they judged incapable of such
things.’ (Sinclair 2004, p. 5) Pursell (2005) states the purpose of both
volumes as having been ‘intended to demonstrate that enslaved Africans, and
African-Americans after them, always have been deeply involved in the creation
and
use of a full range of technologies, and that they therefore must now be
included in histories of American technology.’ (Pursell 2005, p. xv)
Sinclair (2004) contains articles that demonstrate African Technology
transfer to the new world. Garvey, for example, contrasts multiple systems of
West
African rice cultivation (encompassing field layout, irrigation methods, and
rice processing) and their transfer to South Carolina by enslaved Africans.
In South Carolina ‘the rice economy began as an African knowledge system.’
There is also documentation on how a culture of work songs was an integral part
of shaping the work process. Under repressive conditions in the fishing
industry, Black workers generally worked without owning any of the productive
forces other than their labor, but Garvey notes
What did belong to the African American crewmen, however, was the technology
of song that lay at the heart of the fishing process, with which they not
only lifted the unliftable but expressed desires and discontents that were, if
not unspeakable, risky to express for the times. Singing was thus a way Black
workers rendered their work culturally meaningful and effective in a context
that otherwise devalued their contributions and racially divided them from
their employers. (Sinclair 2004, p. 115)
Pursell (2005) organizes a documentary history of Black technological
contributions into seven historical periods beginning with an original
creation of
a smallpox inoculation technique used in Boston in 1722. But mostly Black
contributions to technology were stolen.
During the antebellum period, the U.S. patent office had refused to
recognize inventions made by enslaved Africans, even when their owners wished
to take
out patents in their own names. After the outbreak of the Civil War,
however, the new Confederate government allowed owners to claim patent rights
for
the discoveries of their enslaved laborers. (Pursell 2005, p. 89)
The Afrocentric thesis posits a cultural basis for what Black people
actually do in cyberspace. Battle and Harris (1996) marked the 30-year
anniversary
of the Black power slogan by taking the theme ‘the Internet and the New Black
Power’ as the title of their first chapter. They echo Mandela’s position:
The New Black Power is knowledge: how to get it and how to use it wisely,
profitably. The New Black Power can set fire to a million minds,
instantaneously,
but it does not burn. It can build. It can bring together people separated by
oceans and dialects. It can uplift. And the best exchange of knowledge is
through the vast, worldwide river of information known as the internet, of the
information superhighway.… It is not simply a matter of equality, it is a
matter of survival.… Anyone who does not have access will be a non-citizen—a
Neanderthal living on the fringes of human society. (Battle and Harris, pp. 3,
8)
Battle and Harris also focus on public computing. They advocate local
community networks as important vehicles to provide low-cost connectivity. The
community networking movement continues to maintain its activity in most places
although many local networks have folded up. Joining the networks are the
community technology centers. The network links people together wherever they
access the Net, whereas the CTC is a physical place in which people congregate
for face-to-face synergy and hands-on use of IT. Usually the CTC is stand alone
and the network provides online content as well as various approaches to
hands-on activity including the CTC.
Battle and Harris provide an early directory to Black experience content and
networks on the World Wide Web. It is very much a historical piece as
software, Web addresses, and associated content have changed fundamentally
over the
last five years. However, this remains a major historical text in that it
established both a model and a baseline of information for mapping Black Web
content. Art McGee compiled the earliest Webliography of Black Web content,
followed closely by the Universal Black Pages, a directory of Black Web content
set up and maintained by Black graduate students at Georgia State University.
Prof Ali Ali Dinar at the African Studies Center (University of Pennsylvania)
runs the most comprehensive directory on Africa. F. Leon Wilson has
distinguished himself as a major producer of popular listservs. H-Net, based at
Michigan State University, hosts the main academic listservs including
H-Afro-Am.
Since the Battle and Harris book activity has increased, in the form of
Black virtual community portals, one-stop shopping that includes directories
and
interactive features such as bulletin boards and chat rooms. The main early
example of this is Net Noir, initially sponsored by AOL. Current examples are
_www.Africana.com_ (http://www.Africana.com) , and Black Planet.com. eBlack
Studies is a Web portal for professional and academic Web resources,
specifically comprehensive links to journals, organizations, and academic
programs on
the undergraduate and graduate levels (_www.eBlackstudies.org_
(http://www.eBlackstudies.org) ).
Alkalimat (2004) builds on the earlier work by Battle and Harris and
presents a comprehensive mapping of ‘Black homesteading on the electronic
frontier’
in cyberspace. On one level this is a popular practical guide to Websites,
turning the Web into a sort of distributed encyclopedia. On the other hand it
specifically targets Web-based resources that contain digital collections of
primary data, databases of our actual experience. So it is a resource for
serious researchers as well. This book is a companion volume to the text
Introduction to Afro-American Studies (_www.eblackstudies.org/intro_
(http://www.eblackstudies.org/intro) ).
Alkalimat states:
There are basically four approaches to the use of cyber space in Black
Studies. One is digital history, the digitization of historical information
that
brings a topic back to life in a digital format. This is a major task, to
empty out the archives and turn them into digital computer files. Experiments
are
being explored with various kinds of storage strategies and designs for data
base management and data mining. The main center for this is the Virginia
Center for Digital History, especially their collaboration with the Woodson
Institute, also at the University of Virginia. A second approach is called
Afro-Futurism. This is a school of cultural criticism taking on the notion of a
race-less cyber space by demonstrating that the social production of racisms
and ‘cyber-typing’ will continue into the age of information. The third
approach is virtual community, the use of information technology to digitize
the
social life of a community. The fourth approach is cyber organizing to produce
cyberpower for the empowerment of a new movement for social justice in the
information society. (Alkalimat 2004, p. 5)
This covers the past, the present, the future, and the role of agency.
Jenkins and Om-Ra Seti (1997) anchor their text in the social polarization
thesis:
Black people, suffering in the early stages of the Information Age, may be
like the canary in a coal mine, forecasting climatic dangers before they
become a general manifestation. Thus, as the euphoria sweeps the nation
regarding
the exciting developments of the Information Age, African Americans must
sound the alarm on the dangers of systematic exclusion. (Jenkins and Om-Ra
Seti
1997, p. 4)
On the other hand, they also believe that the information revolution can
lead to ‘unheard of strategies of liberation.’ They go on: ‘The exercise of
values in our allocation or relevant technological resources will be the
critical challenge.… But to do this we must first reinvent our leaders.’ Andrew
Young, former associate of Martin Luther King, Congressman, and US Ambassador to
the UN, echoes these views in his introduction: ‘They have articulated what
we have been thinking about, and now it is time to put it all together.’
(Jenkins and Om-Ra Seti 1997, p. 6)
Jenkins and Om-Ra Seti advance the concept of KyberGenesis for this current
period:
We have identified this unprecedented period of opportunities and
development, as it relates to the Black experience, as KyberGenesis!
KyberGenesis is
the futuristic beginning of a major industry movement for scientific and
technological development in the Black world. If Black people are to be
successful
and prosper in the twenty-first century, there has to be a major movement to
harness the dynamic power of science and technology on a level similar to the
Moorish dynasties in Spain and Portugal during the eighth to fourteenth
centuries. A serious lack of unity and well-defined vision and mission are the
roadblocks to this critical development. This new and dynamic era is a major
door of opportunity that should not be bypassed by those who are fully aware of
what time it is. (Jenkins and Om-Ra Seti 1997, pp. 55-56)
This text calls forth the concept of ‘Sankofa,’ using history for the
future. The authors weave together themes about ancient and traditional culture
though a roll-call of major Black scientists and their contributions to the
current technological revolution, with sweeping descriptions of current industry
development. The Dogon people of Mali almost 1,000 years ago identified a
star–Sirius–that modern astronomy ‘found’ in 1950 (Jenkins and Om-Ra Seti
1997, pp. 74--5). Om-Ra Seti profiles nearly 30 distinguished Black scientists
and engineers currently contributing to a Black Scientific legacy. (Jenkins and
Om-Ra Seti 1997, pp. 79--99). They place science and technology at the
center of cultural life.
They have several proposals for greater use of the current technology. For
example, they argue for the development of Black courseware for use in
distance education, and the use of interactive local networks. Furthermore,
they
target two main issues as the challenges of the new era. Seti focuses on
wireless technology and personal communications services (now called PDAs). As
people have migrated from the pages to the cell phone they will likely move on
to
a PDA integration of several current tools (phone, camera, PC, Internet,
etc.).
