The difficulties of the incarcerated: Technology

Hello, my readers!

I feel that many of you, if not most, are capable of typing on a computer, producing text documents in some kind of an editor or content management system, and doing it at a reasonable speed, say 30 to 40 words per minute.

I ask, would it surprise you to know that there are a plethora of us behind the wires who can't even reach a speed of 10 words per minute?

In our society, which is becoming increasingly reliant and insistent on computer savvy, we have a people sequestered, with so little intent on teaching a skill that could reduce recidivism that it's painful.

I'll give half credit to Florida's Department of Corrections and Securus, an aventiv company: we do have tablets being rolled out across the state for inmates. It is a starting point for an educational potential, teaching a little bit of interaction with an operating system (which is a highly modified, incredibly dated AOSP build), giving people time to look at an onscreen keyboard and learn some basic navigation.

What hurts me deep inside about this is based on my past. I promise, it's not a painful story:

I was (quite thankfully) adopted as a baby, so I have siblings-by-adoption that are yet a couple or few decades older than I am.

First Computer

My first computer was given to me by my older sister: she had just bought one of those fancy Macs in the mid-to-late 1980s, so unto me, she blessed a Tandy TRS-80 Model III.
I was very much a single-digit age then, and this was amazing to my little mind.
A computer! It weighs as much as I do! It's mine! *\o/*

I spent as much time as my parents would allow playing on that computer. It had no speakers, a monochrome display, no onboard storage... and I loved it.

She must have seen the oncoming storm that tech would bring, and providing the TRaSh-80 to me would give me a bulwark to shield me against the tidal wash.

Second computer

It would not be my only computer growing up. I was a churchgoer as a minor. The pastor at the church we attended asked me and my folks if we would be interested in a Commodore 128 they had in storage in the mid 1990s. My eyes lit up at this, and I begged my father to say yes.

Third computer

I bought my first Windows computer in 1998. It was a Packard-Bell, with a Cyrix MII-266 CPU on board, running Windows 95. I had worked all summer, saving money, and convinced my 70-something year old dad to let me spend that money to buy my first new machine. I had to convince him it was necessary, that the Commodore had outlived its educational usefulness. (It was. "New computers use mice and CDs, dad." was part of the argument I used.)

The old man had to make a second run to Circuit City with me and loan me money when we got back home with the machine: I didn't buy a monitor because I thought I'd be able to reuse my old Commodore's display. He wasn't happy with me on that, but I had a fair excuse: I thought a monitor was a monitor, and it would work with my new computer! It works with my Super Nintendo, after all!
(Stupid VGA connectors... :D)

Inexorable March of Technology

Fast forward a quarter century.
I got my start with computers in the 1980s. I would fairly guess that a number of my readers didn't even start breathing until the 1990s. In the march of time and tech, we've blended more and more technology in to the daily life.
I consider myself fortunate to have been given chances, opportunities to stay relatively abreast of the current that threatens to sweep away the technologically weak.

That weak, right now, would be people I am serving time with, as some of them get closer to going home for the first time in a decade or longer.

15 years ago, as example, you walked up to a cashier or one of those then still kinda new self-checkout terminals at the store, rang up your purchases, bagged them, and went about your day.
Now, you can use an app on your smart device, scan everything as you put it in your basket or cart, approach a designated checkstand, press the pay button and debit your banking account. All that's left is to bag up and leave. This was coming as I left society for sequestration.
Imagine a 55+ year old man, away for 30 years, coming out to that for a minute. He's likely never even seen a self-checkout, much less that!

What would Jayel change?

Education. Education, education, education.
In a person's final year of incarceration, I would absolutely have them in classes designed to explain the societal changes that they may have missed.
Show them videos of kiosks being used and explained at restaurants, grocery stores, etc.
Show them what a modern public library has to offer them -- I've surprised men here in telling them they can check out DVDs and Blu-Rays from the library, enjoying a movie or catching up on a TV series they missed.
Give them access to a typing tutor application on a desktop or laptop computer, and an opportunity to beef up their actual typing skills, but explain why it's important in a society that offers fewer paper job applications, more slips of "visit burgerflipper.website/jobs to apply, enter location #BEEF for this store".
Explain cellphone plans! Please, do this! These are the kinds of people that get screwed by believing they must go to a Big 3 carrier and pay $70 a month!
Give them the basics on buying a computer for themselves: stop them from being screwed at a pawn shop, selling a six year old machine for $400, when a much newer, much better machine can be had with a warranty for the same price!

Iceberg

This really is just an iceberg of what I wish were done right in prison.

I wake up from dreams where a corporation-run prison offered classes on current-day survival for interested inmates, and the uptake was huge once the word got out on the compound.

I would wish this kind of dream fulfillment, as it can alleviate the suffering for a class of detained beings.

For now, I'll send this post, with hopes of camaraderie and love for all.

Take care, be good to each other, and thanks for reading. :)!