Choice and Eviction: The Aged and Divisions in New Media

As I mentioned previously , relationships between people and technology in the Grapes of Wrath mirrors contemporary issues of the Digital Divide today. In examining their parallels, we become more aware of the dynamics of adaptation to technology and are able to better realize solutions to helping people find their way through this changing world. One form of Digital Divide today exists particularly among the elderly (a concept I introduced in the second paragraph of my first post). Steinbeck nicely illustrates the elderly’s resistance mentality by means of Grampa’s Joad at the prospect of leaving.

“I ain’t sayin’ for you to stay,” said Grampa. “You go right on along. Me– I’m stayin’. . . This here’s my country. I b’long here. An’ I don’t give a [goshdarn] if they’s oranges an’ grapes crowdin’ a fella outa bed even. . .


They crowded near to him. Pa said, “You can’t, Grampa. This here lan’ is goin’ under the tractors . . . you’d starve.” (Steinbeck 114)

Grampa Joad in this passage depicts the quintessential attitude of many of the old towards transitioning – not only towards a new, potentially more provident land in the literal sense but – in the figurative sense towards the unfamiliar terrain of the unknown of new technology. Even in spite of the chance to engage in current technological activities with succulent prospects of metaphorical nourishment of social and educational connectivity, the aging members of society sometimes choose not to participate and remain in the shriveled up land of the pre-Internet abandoned by most everyone else given the choice. But it’s not necessarily because of a fierce loyalty to an obviously outdated and dying system as one might first be inclined to think. Rather, this reluctance to adapt has more to do with an irrational fear of the unknown and a fixation on the comfortable and familiar methods of the past despite dwindling sustainability as depicted in a study entitled “The Elderly Consumer and Adoption of Technologies.”

In an article from the Denver Post earlier this year, statistics from the Pew Internet & American Life Project show that an increasing number of the aged populace are making the move across the digital divide. “The most significant increase was with 70- to 75-year-olds, who went from 26 percent online in 2005 to 45 percent online in 2008. In the same years, [only] 10 percent more of [those] 73 years and older went online.” This data suggests that those of the older generation that have remained obstinate towards migrating into the digital age have, as a group, been dying out in the technologically archaic wasteland of the past that has since become the domain of the tractors of new media which have repossessed the land.

Grampa Joad ended up being literally bundled along into the technological vehicle of progress (ie. the new family car) by a concerned younger generation but ended up dying shortly after the journey began. Symbolically, the elderly become dead to technology when they resist its adoption. As digital media becomes essential to human interaction, those that remain stuck in a lifestyle of technological abstinence by choice become distanced from the world and risk being cut off. Therefore it’s up to the current generation of digital natives to help the older in the transition.

Already, innovations such as the Jitterbug are easing the process, but it’s important to continue to design new software that is more familiar and easier for elderly to use or else they risk losing out the knowledge and relationships which have become a central part of life in the digital age of exchange. Unless this happens, we risk losing them before they are really gone.
Yet when acceptance of technology becomes a matter of access instead of a matter of choice, the spectacle of Digital Divide changes substantially. And when the invitation to technology comes to those without but eager for access, complications ensue.  Watch for more on that to follow.

*Editor’s note: Sorry about having to scroll so much. I’ve tried to change the margins, but the rounded corners of the main-wrap stay their current size and cut a line straight down my blog when I preview the updated margins. It’s still readable, just rather an eyesore to look at. If anyone can explain how to adjust the corners so they match the wrapper, please do tell.

Investigational Reversion to Grapes of Wrath

Lately, as I’ve been researching the contemporary Digital Divide in relation to the technological/social issues in The Grapes of Wrath, I’ve been hard-pressed to figure out how to contribute to the wider academic conversation. On the one hand, I don’t want to be gratingly contrary to all of my research on the pros of Bridging the Digital Divide for the sake of having something unique to say in favor of the anti capitalistic morals of the novel. On the other hand, I’m just a little reluctant to promote the whole idea as being as hunky dory as the impression that pervades my secondary sources on the topic. I suppose the obvious solution is to make a compromise of sorts, but I wasn’t sure of what exactly until last time in my college English class at BYU, my professor Dr Burton made the useful suggestion to return to the primary text.

The Novel as a Mirror of Technology Issues Today
After skimming through the chapters of the Grapes of Wrath I thought relevant to the theme of Digital Divide, I was able to more clearly think out the link and make a connection with the Overseas Outsourcing aspect of Digital Divide. First, the Midwestern farmers were forced to leave their land by the bank because of too great a reliance on growing methods of bygone days and a loss in competitiveness with the more profitable farm technologies of tractors and dozers. Upon being replaced by technology, they invested in the technology of the automobile that had been available to the masses for a couple of decades previously but which they had never considered investing in until their circumstances necessitated adoption to adapt to the changing world.

Likewise, digital immigrants are compelled to use new technology as the vehicle to financial success in today’s employment environment where familiarity with new technologies has become mandatory to remaining employable across the globe as the Digital Divide narrows. Yet, ironically, the Joads (the main family of the Grapes of Wrath) found that their migration via the “technological vehicle to success” ultimately came to naught due to how far behind they were of everybody else who had already migrated thus suggesting a downside to digital globalization. Here the Depression era immigrants might be compared to the Indians overseas taking information technology jobs out of the US because of a willingness to work for much less than the local workforce.

Globalization of IT: Better Cooperative than Competative
To wrap up this post, here’s my thesis as it has evolved to this point: “In global efforts to close the Digital Divide, industrialized nations may be thought to be endangering their own workforce by opening up a future of potential overseas outsourcing. However, while globalization of communications technology makes for a more competitive world, the connections industrialized nations are establishing within developing nations has greater potential to foster a future of intercooperation for a more unified world.