New Technology: A History of Adaptation and Resistance

"And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them." (The Grapes of Wrath page 97)

As I have written before, characters from The Grapes of Wrath such as Grandpa Joad who are unwilling or unable to adapt to the shifting conditions in technology inescapably prove to be powerless and unable to survive in the face of an ever shifting, technologically progressively-oriented world. In returning to the Digital Divide from a historical lens, as related to how past groups of humanity have dealt with novel advances in the technological sphere, let us consider the group known as the Luddites.

The Ludites were British artisans displaced from work by advances during the Industrial Revolution. They protested by banding together to destroy mechanized looms across the country during 1811-1812 in protest of the new technology which they saw as being a threat to their livelihoods. The movement resulted in a mass execution of the protestors by the government in York and exile of the rest. From their actions, we learn of the futility of struggling against advances in technology against otherwise universal acceptance. In The Grapes of Wrath, the Joads realize this futility of pitting their labors against the hugely efficient tractor and see the need to adapt and move on in order to survive in a competitive world.

America During the 1930s – the Decade of Steinbeck’s publication of The Grapes of Wrath

At this point during the most widespread economic depression ever known to the US, President Franklin D. Roosevelt “mastered the new technology in his radio broadcast ‘fireside chats,’ which reassured a nervous nation. His administration created an alphabet soup of federal agencies all employing new technology to meet new social needs” (Joseph Millichap, "Steinbeck and Film", page 27). While the effects of those efforts remain contested, many such as Millichap agree that the president’s decisive investment in the latest technology had to offer during the doldrums of national stagnation resulted in the eventual economic turnaround.

Technological Dilemma within The Grapes of Wrath
When Joads (the main family of the novel) reach Weedpatch, a modern government-run camp for immigrants seeking employment in California (incidentally part of the Resettlement Administration Act of President Roosevelt’s New Deal), they encounter a problem common to those on the disadvantaged side of the Digital Divide today. They lack the knowledge of how to use new technology used by the camp appropriately. In the case of the novel, plumbing proves to be an issue for a sizeable number of campers that have never had access to running water before. One newly-arrived woman attempted to use a toilet as a washing machine and Ma Joad herself mistakenly washed her hands and face in the men’s lavatory (The Grapes of Wrath pages 311-314). In both cases, ignorance of convention resulted in inefficiency, misuse, and embarrassment which led to avoidance behavior. These issues were easily remedied by a brief demonstration and explanation by the camp council and contributed to a more efficiently run camp. This instance stresses again that access to technology alone is insufficient to overcoming the Digital Divide unless combined with as the know-how that comes of familiarity and/or instruction. As Chris Kocela argues,

In the end, the epistemological problem of how to bring about understanding still underlies the need to cross ontological borders, just as the migrant farmers must accept constant destruction of their individual, lived worlds in order to arrive at the set of social codes that will enable them to survive as a “people” in California. (“A Postmodern Steinbeck, or Rose of Sharon Meets Oedipa Maas” page 253)

Thus, regardless of the physical availability of a technology, the physiological border of ignorance can only be passed through obliterating outmoded, inaccurate conceptions of the past and reconstructing those conceptions on the other side of the divide with help from the native guides familiar with the new technological territory. Otherwise, immigrants risk maladjustment in the transition.  Likewise, we see the importance of computer literacy in today’s age of technology and the relevance of providing education in addition to access to today’s Digital Immigrants.

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.

An Overview

The Hub of Investigation
Thanks to the suggestions of Ben and Heather on my last post, I have been focusing on one aspect of The Grapes of Wrath and “researching the heck out of it.”

Discovering my Point
In the first place, finding what the heck I am arguing about has been a long convoluted journey starting from the day I began brainstorming and then kept on brainstorming the digital issues in The Grapes of Wrath. (See my postings for May). Technological issues involving the Internet are so very connected anyway that distinguishing among them is a bit of a challenge, yet I’m hoping to be able to explore this singular issue I’ve decided on in greater depth – especially considering I’ve got more of a thesis to go off of now.

So what is my Point?
The aspect I decided upon turned out to be the concept of a Digital Divide which essentially stipulates that a boundary exists in global society that divides those that are able to make practical use of the information and services available over the internet and those that are not. Many would argue that this divide has been narrowing in the past decade due to a wider availability and affordability, but still the issue arises that increased availability does not equal greater accessability. More people, especially in the developing regions of the world – may have the means to attain this technology but are unable to make use of it in ways to better their condition due to unfamiliarity with its various uses and applications.

Novelist of the 20th Century John Steinbeck makes an applicable point in his The Grapes of Wrath concerning disparities in class and communication that might symbolically be likened to the current problem of Digital Divide today in conveying the perspective of “digital immigrants” seeking to overcome the Digital Divide through the desperate journey of the Joads. Thus Steinbeck illustrates how the less technologically advanced parts of the world are set at disadvantage to the more modern, technologically savvy nations and implicitly argues that because humanity exists in the form of a global community, their plight is ours. In this digital age of widespread connectedness, understanding and being able to implement the practicalities of the internet has become paramount to being able to function within a global society.

How Steinbeck Relates
The major conflict in The Grapes of Wrath came about of the Joad family’s inability to sustain themselves or pay the rent for the parched farm their family had lived on for generations. Eventually, the capitalistic force of the Bank determines to evict them and their neighbors wallowing in the same predicament off the land in favor of the farm tractor technology which requires fewer people to do the same amount of work. So they are forced from their land by new technology because they could not compete with the force of technological progress.

What’s Coming Next
In my following posts, I anticipate investigating some of the questions of the Digital Divide in Relation to

1. A historical perspective: How people have adapted to technology before in the context of the novel and otherwise

2. The problem as it still exists

3. Recent efforts to bridge the divide today
4. A perspective on the Future

5. Concluding thoughts as to what this all means to us

So that’s the idea. As I make my posts, I’ll be linking my ideas back here to keep everything together.

Expository Beginnings

It's eerie, but the wordle cloud of my blog thus far accurately describes my state of mind with regards to my writing on this project.   All of these themes whirling around in this spinning conflagration of chaos, yet gravity is beginning to make some headway in pulling some of these larger concepts into place as my research influences its formation.

Foremost, there's the governing aspect of the Internet of course - which I'd approach from a capitalistic vs. communistic perspective in following with the major theme of Grapes of Wrath. Going along the lines of economic and social ramifications of these governments and their (r)evolving relationship in the Internet, I'm interested in the question of how communication technology shapes society.  Then there's the socio-cultural aspects to look into along with the idea of property rights and their influence on sense of online community interactions.

Now that it's all coming together, I think I'll be able to organize some quotes into this congealing idea tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

Human/Intellectual Property Rights on the Web

In my previous posts I’ve brainstormed Stienbeck’s Grapes of Wrath in relation to Internet issues involving supply and demand of information, the evolution of the new media, and how groups can unite for social reform through means of media. This series of tangent thoughts has led me to examine the larger issue of intellectual property rights of the Internet.

But wait a minute. Didn’t I say in my last post that social activism was my main point? I did indeed. However, I’m now seeing that while these digital revolutionary movements have been the result, property rights have been the cause. It all gets back to the question of the human rights of use and ownership and the boundaries for containing those rights. So what are people exactly entitled to in terms of this digital age? Ownership of information? Certainly people deserve to be attributed acknowledgement at the least for their efforts and contributions to society, but do they really own what they publish as theirs?

 Once a conceptualized idea becomes public domain, does it really have an owner?

When the Joads were evicted from their farm in The Grapes of Wrath, it was because the bank had staked ownership on their land – much the way that Internet databases stake claim to their collective knowledge. Going along with a quote from Capitalism and the Internet: “Can the big corporations enclose the commons that is the Internet? If so, how? The jemmy they want to use to break in to the Internet commons is intellectual property law . . . they claim to own the software and won't let anyone else use it” (See marxist.com). Any comments?

I’m trying to get a hold of The Intellectual Property Renaissance in Cyberspace: Why Copyright Law Could Be Unimportant on the Internet by Eric Schlachter, but other ideas for sources to go to would be great too.

Global Activism through Cyber Media

Going back to my main point on the importance of social activism and the tool new media can have in that activism, I found an article from English Global Voices about a successful effort of the masses in Egypt coming together to combat poor living conditions by demanding the right to minimum wages.

The movement was nationwide and was propelled and unified particularly by a central website which chronicled the groups’ efforts, purpose, victories and strategies. All of this convalesced into a huge, coordinated strike on May 2nd that resulted in a court ruling fulfilling the peoples’ aims of a minimum wage compensation for all of its workers.

Contrast that with the ultimate failure of the sporadic strike efforts in The Grapes of Wrath, and you can see what impact communication in networked communities has on social movement impact. The migrants to California in the book all had a common goal of achieving a sustainable quality of life. What they lacked was the centralized communication necessary to organize and coordinate their efforts.

What drove the old farmers of the Dust Bowl era off their land was the development of the tractor – a development that forced the "exodusters" together in purpose even as it drove them from the land their lives had been grounded in before. Does this tractor signify the new media driving out those of the old media age? If so, it seems that the old media’s chance for survival rests in how well they integrate with the new. The Dust Bowl farmers were neither able to integrate into their new environment or unify in their efforts to combat its threat to their livelihood. The Egyptians did integrate in a unified effort against the threat. And collectively, their voices were heard and acknowledged. Any other effects of the old and/or new medias strike you at all in how well they enable/disable social cause?