i will add links and images very soon…

i recently click on my nytimes link to begin my morning online news rounds, and saw this headline: . as you can imagine, it caught my attention for several reasons, one of which is that i have been following the macarthur foundation and digital youth research project for at least 3 years. i first came across mimi ito’s name in gonzala frasca’s posting about critical video games (this what back when i was going to do my research on that topic). as my research interests became more fine-tuned, i began to gravitate more and more to ito’s work and work around issues of seriously and rigorously co-examining what young people are doing while in digital environments. by co-examining, i mean that i am interested in work that is done with young people, not just about them.

but where my work comes in is that i’m noticing, along with others, that there is a curious discussion of something called the ‘digital divide’ that centers on socio-economics. another way to phrase this is what and who is enabled or invited to participate and what and who is constrained or not invited to participate in these emerging environments? more to the point: what ‘new’ forms of inequity are these spaces illuminating or creating? connection speed, hardware availability, technical support, geographic location, cultural norms, and other parts of societal ways of being influence the tensions and splits around technology. emerging discussions of digital environment and young people fit into and simultaneously emerge out of this ’societal way of being’. but who is able/invited to speak about this and who is not?

and even more specifically related to my work, where in this emerging discussion are young people with disabilities? what work is being done that connects or bridges emerging discussions of the digital engagements of young people with what young people who are traditionally marginalized outside of the ‘normal’ way of being? where are the people with intellectual disabilities in discussions of digital engagements? where are the people with learning disabilities? where is the blind community? where is the deaf community? can the experiences of people with disabilities as they engage with digital technologies not be included in the grand narratives that are emerging? what do people with disabilities have to say about this?

and this line of questioning and thinking is soooo full of contradictions and complexity. what is my position as a researcher, thinker, ally ? what am i trying to do by joining my work with others who are raising these questions? just who do i think i am?

to be continued…