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Women and Technology


In the past year, New York City has done much to promote high technology. While economic development in New York's special high-tech zones is a priority, it is also important to focus on upgrading the skills of citizens in these communities.

Currently, New York's high-tech economic development efforts are focused on eight districts: Harlem, Long Island City, DUMBO, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Sunset Park, Red Hook, Staten Island and most recently in the South Bronx. These are some of the poorest neighborhoods in New York. Since there are a large number of single mothers in these neighborhoods, it is important to target tech education and training at women. Poor women are the least likely to have computer training and this keeps them out of higher paying jobs. Focusing training on single mothers will enable their families to benefit from the influx of high-tech businesses in their communities.

If mothers are trained in high-tech skills, it is highly likely that they will pass on this knowledge to their children. Thus, by focusing new tech-training programs on women, New York can also influence the future generation of New Yorkers. This is extremely important if New York is to further develop its current focus on high-tech industries like biotechnology and information technology.

One way to upgrade the skills of working mothers in these neighborhoods is to divert money from already established programs. New York's Commission on the Status of Women could play an important role in making this happen. For example, recently, the U.S. Department of Labor gave the Private Industry Council funding to train several hundred New Yorkers over the next two years in high-tech skills. These funds could be targeted at building the skills of individuals within the eight high-tech districts.

Another way would be to require that companies lured into these high-tech zones by below-market rent in wired office space offer high-tech skills workshops focused on women. This would help build positive relations with the communities in which they reside while improving their likelihood of being employed.

If efforts are not made to focus on the education and training of families where economic development programs are planned, it is likely that they will be further marginalized. They will be less likely to know how to use a computer or access information via the Internet. In the end, economic development without social development is a recipe for exacerbating the digital divide.

The high-tech sector is still dominated by men. Therefore, focusing high-tech education and training on women is a sound policy choice no matter what neighborhood they live in.

While women have now attained parity in Internet use in the U.S., employment opportunities are still highly biased towards men. According to New York-based high-tech networking association Webgrrls International women still represent only 20 percent of employees in Internet businesses. In addition, typically, women work in technology business areas such as marketing, advertising and public relations; very few work as programmers with computer science or engineering backgrounds or make it to upper management. Two notable examples of women who defy the norm are New York-based venture capitalist Esther Dyson and Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.

It is easy to see these recommendations, while targeted specifically at women, could easily be used as a basis for all New Yorkers who find themselves unplugged and tuned out. In the end, if New York's high-tech economic development efforts are to benefit people living in all five boroughs, we must closely coordinate them with related social development programs.

New York cannot rely on the private sector to bring wealth to our poor neighborhoods. Instead, the city must make a concerted effort to target education, training and employment at women and youth. It is only then that we will be able to realize the goals of our economic development programs and build a better future for the city.

Laura Forlano is a doctoral student studying communication technology policy at Columbia University.

Sharpton's Endorsement


Al Sharptons endorsement for mayor has been postponed by his unexpected stay in jail. But it is worth asking: just how big is the Sharpton constituency in New York City? How many voters can he influence?

The best evidence we have of Sharpton's electoral strength is his past performance. Sharpton has run in three Democratic primaries -- for senator in 1992 and 1994, and for mayor in 1997. There has been no candidate for office in the history of New York City with so defined a group of supporters as Al Sharpton.

The raw numbers show that Sharpton's New York City vote has stayed the same regardless of over-all turnout:

  Sharpton Total % Sharpton
1992 S: 136,118 656,283 20.7
1997 M: 131,848 411,459 32.0

The same is true of his numbers by borough. The only changes of as much as 2,000 votes were his drop of 3,000 votes each election in Queens and his 5,000 vote spike in 1994 in Manhattan (which, presumably, was anti-Moynihan liberals):

Bronx:      
1992 S: 25,238 95,674 26.4
1994 S: 25,086 59,494 42.2
1997 M: 26,299 69,111 38.1
Brooklyn:      
1992 S: 50,170 195,298 25.7
1994 S: 49,193 127,823 38.5
1997 M: 50,198 128,366 39.7
Manhattan:      
1992 S: 26,515 180,316 14.7
1994 S: 31,320 118,136 26.5
1997 M: 26,236 122,847 21.4
Queens:      
1992 S: 32,664 164,723 19.8
1994 S: 29,778 101,960 29.2
1997 M: 26,739 81,022 33.0
Staten Island:      
1992 S: 1,531 20,452 7.5
1994 S: 1,613 11,605 13.9
1997 M: 1,656 10,112 16.4

Even at the Assembly District level, Sharptons votes were remarkably consistent. In 44 of the 61 ADs, his vote never varied by as much as 500 from one election to the next.

It should be noted turnout across the board dropped 1992 to 1994, while between 1994 and 1997 white turnout declined further and minority turnout rose.

The stability of Sharptons vote between 1994 and 1997, despite his sharp percentage declines in his best districts, came from the fact that these districts cast a higher percentage of the city vote in 1997. Looked at another way, the 48,000 largely anti-Sharpton whites who stayed home in 1997 were replaced by 40,000 largely anti-Sharpton minority voters, while 5,000 anti-Moynihan whites in 1994 shifted their votes away from Sharpton, so his over-all percentage in 1997 was only .7 percent below his 1994 showing.

Conclusion: About 30,000 voters come out to vote for Sharpton and stay home if he does not run. Another 95,000 voters have voted for Sharpton all three times he has run.

That is about one-eighth of the voters likely to vote in this Democratic primary, a sizable chunk. Of course, just because these voters vote for Sharpton when he runs does not mean that they follow his endorsements when he doesn't.

But it is these voters the Democratic candidates are looking to influence when they court Al Sharpton.


 

Endorsements and Michael Bloomberg

By Susan Reefer

Endorsements matter, or not, depending on who you talk to.

They matter, or at least matter more, when the endorsement is unexpected; when the person making the endorsement rarely deigns to do so in other races; when the endorsement is based on a shared ideal, rather than a personal relationship; when the person making the endorsement is well-liked and well-trusted.

Endorsements have traditionally been more of an issue in Democratic primaries, were organizational and coalition politics traditionally play a bigger role.

But even in Republican primaries, endorsements are worth noting.

The Republican mayoral primary in New York City is often an intellectual exercise, and this year will probably not be very different. The prohibitive front-runner is Michael Bloomburg, not because of his party credentials (he been a Republican just outside of six months) or his past electoral victories (he has none) or his long record of public service (ditto). But he does have a lot of money, and that will probably be enough to put him over the top.

So while the Republicans may not have much of a horserace, the endorsements are still an interesting commentary, if not on the candidates, then on the would-be kingmakers.

John McCain, it is rumored, will come to New York and campaign for and with Michael Bloomburg. McCain has his own interests, certainly; everything from another Republican Presidential run in 2008 to an independent bid in 2004 has been mentioned. So a McCain endorsement, whatever effect it would have on the outcome of the race, will certainly get McCain on the news for at least one 24-hour news cycle in the nation's largest media market.

But a McCain endorsement will have at least some small impact, in the form of credibility. McCain may be a maverick, and Republicans may be a little wary of his next move, but he is (at least at press time) a Republican, he is a bonafied American hero, and he is a duly elected United States Senator. He is the real thing, a modern American statesman. And he may lend some weight to the Bloomburg image, which despite a heavy media buy this month, is still in need of some definition.

New York City politics have a long tradition of creative alliances; this will make one more. But this and other endorsements will also be an interesting preview of things to come on the national scene.

Susan Reefer is a Republican pollster and media strategist. She is based in New York City.

Privacy on the Internet


A war is being waged on the Internet over the right to keep personal information personal. The fears by the public are real: identity theft, rejection from health insurance or from a prospective employer based on information they should not have, a permanent unease because everything that you write, say or do can and will be stored digitally in databases.

New Yorkers are concerned about online privacy. More than 77 percent say they want federal laws to restrict what kinds of personal information can be collected about them, according to the Internet Policy Institute.

Privacy advocates such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Center for Democracy and Technology, and Privacy International are concerned about the protection of personal information about consumers online. Specifically of interest are:

  • The collection and possible sale of personal information by Web sites
  • Whether privacy policies are displayed and enforced
  • What personal information will be used for
  • Whether the disclosure of information will be "opt-in," "opt-out," or mandatory
  • Whether the site allows consumers to view and edit their personal information
  • Whether online transactions are secure and therefore do not put personal information at risk.

 

Privacy has taken the podium at conference after conference in New York this year. Lawyers lobbied for legal solutions, economists evoked economic explanations, advocates approved activist answers and all of them turned to technological experts with the hopes of a technological answer. After all, if technology created this problem, can't it also be part of the solution?

Privacy protection has become a huge market, with a wide variety of products and services exist that promise to safeguard personal information. The technological solutions to privacy protection include encryption, secure transmission, digital signatures, anonymous Web-browsing and e-mailing, independent software agents that protect consumer privacy online, services that provide expiring e-mails, anonymous ownership of bank accounts and other properties, and unique credit card numbers for every purchase. However, there are several important reasons that we may not want technology to fix this problem. One reason is that living in a world where our privacy is protected only by technology, is a world where privacy does not really exist. Using technology to guard our privacy pushes us further into a world of paranoia, secrecy and fear. In addition, such methods are naturally biased towards those with the time, energy and money to devote to protecting their privacy; a very small minority.

This year, there have been almost 50 laws about privacy introduced into Congress. Since policy is so slow to catch up in this area, many of the laws are outdated, ill-informed or premature. Some of them even further erode privacy while proclaiming to protect it. Most are piecemeal, not looking at the problem at the whole, but focusing on one sector or another. It is clear that experts still are not sure whether regulation or self-regulation would be more likely to achieve desired results in this area.

Self-regulation might come in the form of an "opt-in" or "opt-out" standard for protecting personal information online. While businesses might prefer to have consumers opt out if they do not want to receive mailings from third parties, it is unlikely that this standard would satisfy privacy advocates or consumers.

The privacy debate seems to be happening in a vacuum; academics, industry leaders, government officials, activists and the public are rarely brought together to design a solution that addresses the social outcomes that we want to achieve - or even to be sure what the right outcomes are that we should be aiming for.

In the end, the erosion of privacy is just another example of how our science and technology policy-making system has failed us. We have allowed technology to be developed in complete disregard of the societal outcomes that we want to achieve. Since there is a fundamental problem with this system of policy-making, it makes little sense to fight inconsistent, uncoordinated policy with more of the same. Instead, academia and industry, the public sector and the private sector, officials and activists, must all come together to design a solution that reaches across legal, economic, social and technological spheres.

Laura Forlano is a doctoral student studying communication technology policy at Columbia University.



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