COFFEE & COMPUTERS/Wood Green & Turnpike Lane. Call for Volunteers.

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Permalink Reply by Finsbury Park Ranger on July 21, 2016 at 22:12

It's weird how we're obsessed with teaching vulnerable or marginalised people IT. The internet is a gateway to procrastination, pornograghy, shopping addiction, gambling addiction, Nigerian scams, reduction in book reading, misinformation, bullying, banking fraud, virus blackmail and often creates a terrible digital footprint by people that don't know what they are doing for prospective employers.

I think the internet is a little bit like Power tools, if you cant work out how to use it from reading the instructions yourself, you should give it a wide birth.

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Permalink Reply by Liz on July 21, 2016 at 22:17

But also increasingly the only way that people will be able to claim benefits, do job searches for JSA or access vital services. All these things are going online and people have no choice but to use the internet because the government has decreed it that way.

Digital exclusion is a big problem for the marginalised, as you call them, because without at least basic skills and access usually via a library or a community centre they will be marginalised even further.  

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Permalink Reply by Finsbury Park Ranger on July 21, 2016 at 23:29

I know what your saying, however people increasingly don't have a choice because some group of idiots originally thought that everyone should be coerced into accessing the web and the whole digital inclusion thing became a born again mission with such little thought about what this would really mean for some people.

I've see this push for 'digital inclusion' and it's always done so badly. Teaching people to surf the web with such little care to keep them self safe by volunteers, often so poorly trained and so so so many of these third sector zealot organisations, chasing pots of funding, do exactly that by pushing IT onto people that can barely read.

I see it so much, People being paid to give out nonsense 'accredited' IT qualifications and then bemoaning privately to friends how people waste too much of their time online or how it's warped the minds of their teenage children with porn or how no one reads books anymore or can keep a conversation without checking their phone.

The internet is like a really busy road and some people just shouldn't be encouraged to cross it if you ask me.

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Permalink Reply by Liz on July 22, 2016 at 0:15

You're talking about etiquette - I'm talking about government policy.
If your internet access is one hour at the library to do all your job search applications so as not to get sanctioned then wasting it looking at cat pictures would seem foolhardy if you are to eat next week.
Every new technology changes behaviour and people bemoan it - remember when television warped young minds? - but telling people who have to use it that they should just say no isn't going to wash down the job centre.
And let's not even get into the sub-text here that poor people shouldn't be encouraged onto the Internet as they'll only waste their time!

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Permalink Reply by Coffee and Computers on July 22, 2016 at 7:20

Dear FPR & Liz. Whereas I, in no way, want to discourage the exchange of opinions, I am sorry that our listing has provoked the discussion that it has in response to a request for volunteers on a very real project that is helping people use modern technology for a variety of positive purposes - none the least in order to increase their human contact with the world. I'd appreciate it greatly if you could carry on the conversation elsewhere. Best wishes. Eric

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Permalink Reply by Coffee and Computers on July 22, 2016 at 7:10

Hi Margaret. Thank you very much for volunteering. Your assistance will be most welcome. I'll email you in the next couple of days with details. Kind regards. Eric.

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Permalink Reply by Cosette P. Bocanegra on September 18, 2016 at 22:37

Hi Eric, could you give me more information on the next dates for volunteers? I would like to help if I can move around my working schedule. Many thanks.

Cosette

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Permalink Reply by Coffee and Computers on September 19, 2016 at 8:43

Hi Cosette

We have a session this Wednesday at Hornsey Library at 10.30 and on Thursday week at The Shine Centre, Turnpike Lane at 11.00. Please kindly email me at info@coffeecomputers.org to let me know if you could make either of these. Thanks very much. Eric

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Permalink Reply by Margaret Moxom on September 19, 2016 at 10:14

Please take my name off your list of interested parties. I have moved out of the area. Thanks.

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