black boys on computers, console games and the internet
"Jamaica Hires a 13 Year Old Technology Consultant" was the lead press story on news wires during December of 1998. It might be surprising to find a job like this filled by a young black kid. It is these younger family members blackSoftware.com is labeling The Black Digerati Version Three or BDV III, and we are inducting them into the Third Wave evolution of the American economy.
This young black age ground has are mastering video game consoles operations. They could cruise through Microsoft Office, HTML and programming languages before graduating high school with the right direction and mentoring. We are in the Third Wave of the national economic movement in 1999 post-dotcom. Plans to educate Blacks about Cyberspace will NEVER BE OBSOLETE because we need programmers, mathmaticians, scientists, software programmers and do-it-yourselfers to start "getting it" when they are young and willing to listen to their authorities. These special young people are young enough to fail then quickly get over it by succeeding.
Young Black needs to be mentored about the digital economy. Experts have found that black kids in K-12 grades LEARN COMPUTER SCIENCE at the same pace as their non-black peers. when this essay was published in (1999). For the long future, information technology will drive the economy not agricultural workers or manufacturing production lines. Skills, knowledge and demostrated abilities regardless of where you got them from is what it takes to make a good wage today. Kids are intuitive enough to know that things are changing around them.
These young upstarts are natural knowledge workers. Black ingenuity has always been there to improve our developing economy, but many say African Americans have been the last to embrace the Third Wave digitally driven economy. Critics keep looking for a "Black Bill Gates" but he is here now. A few events that happened provide useful thought leadership.
The first African-American to obtain the PhD. in computer science did so during the Industrial Age in 1969.
In 1989 an African American graphics designer familiar with computer programming released a collection of African American software in a Black Clip Art series.
In 1998 and 1999 African Americans convinced Microsoft to form joint venture partnerships to build web sites and software products for them. Led first by Black Entertainment Television, and later by Harvard's Henry Louis "Skip" Gates of Afropedia LLC, these partnerships are producing products and multimedia content for Black consumption. The results of these ventures and others influenced by them may be too early to tell in 1999. Have you seen the multi-media reference software package title, "Encarta Africana",on any television commercial yet? It is there. And recently, Africana.comand AT&T teamed up to present the rich art holdings of the nation's historically black colleges and universities, while bet.com,produced by Black Entertainment
Television, a new dot-com, is thriving to become a profitable IPO-bound Black portal during a time when Wall Street has taken a bath over launching new dot-com ideas.
Younger Black Digerati Version 3 members are depending less on television for entertainment. The Digital Economy's Internet now competes with offline arcade quality console games. These well known gaming sites are connected by cable television services found in most homes. And, PC-based 3D adventure game software gives them applications to customize and learn software programming skills at levels not taught in K-12. The gaming industry is growing because young kids are developing customized software add-ons to make these programsmore exciting.
Advertising monguls add cultural idols to batches of console and PC game software, while today's digital divide is about as close as being online connected as a free Internet universe can be. The cable modem connected home computer is plays a big role -- Micheal Jordon had opened his online sports store. After basketball, Jordon could have a big future as a software producer and his products have already met with some success. The largest video game distributors in Japan today are Nintendo and Sony with 32 percent of all titles sold dispensed though in-store vending machines owned and serviced by Digicube or Sun Distributors. Video game vending hasn't hit the shores of the Americas in a serious way yet, but stay tuned because it's one of the least expensive ways to sell product to those with the money. The Nintendo 64 gaming console is headed down to a price point of $99 retail, sometime in 1999, down from $199 at initial launch.
Going forward into 1999 We predict you'll see convenience store PC game vending machine in densely populated American neighborhoods with a certain income profile in about a year. Sure to increase sales of products oriented towards entertainment and recreation, the computer superstores, with their large fleet of black checkout clerks, sales reps, service and technical support personnel, won't like it but what can they do aboutit?
Parents will win because buying adventure game software form a vending machine that gives you suggestions and recommendations from top software experts is a more convenient way to buy, than traveling long distances to the computer superstores. And they won't be bothered by commissioned sales reps barking at them with the last promo deal they do not intend to purchase. To their credit, computer superstores offer career training, digital-economy style, for employees that take advantage of it. Employees receive discounted certification training courses and a bevy of freecomputer gear. These are skills that cannot be taught in modern free high schools.
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Some Black parents got the jump on building computer savvy young membersof the household after meeting Santa Claus during Christmas or during the DreamCast launch. If you believe these game console computers are a waste of money - think again! The younger you are when you learn how to control joysticks, master keyboard layouts and make adjustments that keeps software running smooth on these computers, builds useful computer operations skills needed in professions throughout the knowledge economy.
Compared to television's Mr. Rodgers and Big Bird, Nick Online and Disney Radio have done more to attract Black Digerati VersionIIIs into the mainstream of the connected Internet world morethan any other element in their daily lives. America Online was the stopping point for Nickelodeon and they have attractive games for kids to play. Lucas Arts started working on Black Digerati Version 2 members (aged 18-35) with Star Wars and the Return of the Jedi. Now there are computer games and sequels.
From the experience end, these hi-impact graphics-terrific products, to their credit, induced many BDV 2 members into programming and computer graphicdesign careers while multi-cultural software titles from
companies theseat that time were virtually non-existent. Who knows how many minorities joined the Air Force to fly a Stealth fighter Jet after getting hooked on Microsoft Flight Simulator. Who knows how many have become Nascar drivers and Monster Truck enthusiasts.
Microsoft, The Leaning Company, Claris Software, and Broderbund helpedthem get knowledge sophisticated and computer literate. BDV 2 members are the inventory for useful "knowledge adventure utility organizations " such as Jillian type computer based amusement centers, Museum of Sciences and all types of localized Computer Museums for kids and adults, placed strategically throughout the states.
These adventure/education utility firms strive in political correctness by including people of all stripes and colors in their exhibits and literature. And they are the right place for publicly supported tax dollars to go in helping one overcome color barriers after school is out. However, some would still argue that high-tech provides limited opportunities for Blacks and women to fully participate at the level of their non-black peers because of cultural dissonance and simply just the way the job market works. Colleges and trade institutes influence corporate hiring goals beginning with academic policies. More people of color are stepping up career ladders of digital age driven companies and that's what we all want. And some get there after working in sales, customer services and break fix technical departments in large computer superstore chains, while others are self-taught or educated at traditional four-year schools. There are a lot of people of color working in Computer Superstore positions and the stores are raking in billions of dollars. These corporations are being warned about letting go of Affirmative Action goals. Blacks will lose out on three trillion dollars in income opportunities during the Third Wave and this could make race matters worse.
How To Get There
The long view is that because Affirmative Action is on the verge of being dismantled in State led initiatives beginning in California, home of the high-tech industry, the way for graduating BDV3s to jump into high paying job roles in the New Economy fast is to take charge of your own education. Do not leave it up to Second Wave schools to do it for you. Invent something yourself without dependence on scoring high on SATs and hopefully getting into the school of your own choice,but score high anyway!
Bill Gates was a Harvard dropout. Parents, get your kids to the local chapter meeting of the BlackData
Processing Association or an "organization of Black Engineers and Scientists as fast as you can.
There are good networking opportunities in urban areas and online. These networks work for you not against you. Perhaps Jesse Jackson is right to focus on Silicon Valley after doing the right thing on Wall Street. Inclusion is a good thing. However,there are solid opportunities for venture capital return on investment with young black-owned and built start-ups if the venture people knew how to find them. Run Jesse Run! Turn the lights on.
All bets are looking bood for Black Digerati Version III members to make money doing computer support, hacking and cracking between now and the year 2050 when it has been predicted that Hispanics will become the ethnic group vith the highest population count in the UnitedStates. Prodigy Online Services knew what's up with that. On April 7th, 1998, Prodigy introduced a new Internet service for Spanish-speaking Americans. The whole multicultural community is looking for products they have not seen yet, especially those that make you feel as comfortable as your living room couch.
It's hard to find a young black kid today that isn't computer literate - thanks to all the new money flowing into public education and and not for profit community computer learning labs. Thank Bill and Melinda Gates for the $20 billion scholarship grants over 20 years. Thank you Colin Powell, Dell, AT&T, Ameritech US West and the rest for helping out when everybody starting getting nervous over the "Digital Divide" of the 1990s.
Thank Asia and the Taiwanese as well because if it wasn't for their manufacturing capacities the Apple MacIntosh would still cost about $2,000 and the IBM PC type units would be just below that. Now we can buy great PCs for the Black Digerati Version Three members for less than $500 and these PCs can run the latest high impact PC game good enough to hold their attention. The software is that good.