This zine is a product of the 24 Hour Zine Thing, hosted locally by The Hen House Distro.
The idea came about earlier in the summer when a man approached a friend and myself asking if we knew of anyone who was hiring, or needed help, ect. I felt bad because I dont know of any... Then I asked if he has ever heard of Creigslist, then I asked if he had access to a computer. He replied that he wasn't good with them. Not surprising really, he looked to be in his mid to late forties, probably never needed to use one before and has gotten by just fine up until now. Here where we reach this particularly interesting intersection of two line on a graph the first being the exponential growth of technology and the other being the the slow, all encompassing collapse of the world economy which is reflected in the rising price of necessities.
When the housing bubble popped so did a lot of peoples sense of reality, people who settled in their ways way back in the 60's 70's and 80's, they stopped keeping up with the trends and now that they have no safety nets they are having a hard time getting started again. Through the recent influx of natural and man-made disasters there has been a steady flow of former home owners and career holders to the streets as the bubbles just keep popping. Not to mention those who grew up and still live in poverty who haven't had the privileged of owning a computer.
So we thought it would be good to put together a zine on using a computer, just the basics: identifying the parts of the computer, how to interact with one, use the internet, and set up an email. Then weeks later another friend contacted me with the 24 Hour Zine Thing so that weekend we showed up and worked on the lay out and got like 1/5 of it put together. Over the following week I made frequent trips to the library to print out and assemble the rest of the the zine. So seven days instead of one, meh, I can live with that. So now I'm going to run off a bunch of copies to give to Hen House and to stock at FnB.
I would like to follow this up with a workshop if there is interest in it. There a few libraries around and I know someone who works at one so that's a plus. The city has plans to build a computer cafe, and I'm interested to see how it is going to be set up, I see the lower class taking advantage of this service as a good thing but for some reason I think the city might be intending this facility to cater to the student and business class of the city. We'll see.
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