Digital Divide in Kern County
A few years ago after becoming active in the Kern County community, I found this report titled, Conectados: Connecting Los Angeles Underserved Communities, which was completed by The Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) in April 2003. The TRPI is a Latino think tank that is a free-standing, nonprofit policy research organization which is headquartered at the University of Southern California.
And it is ironic as I write this now, because when I came across the report several years ago, I had no knowledge of GIS or its power, but I was fascinated with the maps that were included in this report. So now that I am familiar with GIS and have become empowered to help our community, I think a study of the digital divide in Kern County would be beneficial to find out where publicly accessible technology is available, and where it is not.
Especially if we, as a community, want to bring more technology training and technology-related jobs to this area. I feel that if we can find the digital divide in Kern County, then we can focus on areas that are in need of technology and training.
