History and Learning

Today in class we were discussing the "Digital Divide" and the problems encountered by needing to build human resources, which is more difficult that just handing someone a computer and telling them to use it. One example that sprang to mind was Bill Gates. When he was a boy, he went to an exclusive private high school that cost $10,000 a year when Harvard cost $2,500 a year. His mother and other parents bought a supercomputer for the school for interested boys to use, as well as instructors to help them use it. This gave Bill Gates much of his first exposure to computer programming.

Even if a third world country had been given the expensive school and the expensive computer, they would have had no ability to rise to Bill Gates' stature without learning how to operate the complex computer. It would just be something to stare at. Bill Gates' history with the digital divide allowed him to become of the richest and most computer-smart people in the world. In history, it is important to realized how people ot where they did- many times because they were on the right side of the "Digital Divide", something that like wealth or connections is totally random and does not provide equal opportunities to all like our Constitution calls for.