Last week, at the Minority Media and Communications Council’s third annual Broadband and Social Justice Summit, MMTC released its latest publication, On the Path to the Digital Beloved Community: A Civil Rights Agenda for the Technological Age.
The digital Beloved Community is an extension of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a beloved community in which all Americans enjoy equal rights and fair treatment. In today’s digital society, access to these civil rights is nearly impossible to attain without access to the Internet.
When most of us hear the words “Beloved Community,” we immediately think of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his inspiring vision of a world where equality, justice, and love are freely enjoyed by all. Dr. King’s Beloved Community is what America would look like after the wounds of the Civil Rights Movement had been healed. We took this concept of an almost utopian existence and translated it to the digital world.
The Digital Beloved Community book is both a retrospective and aspirational vision of what has been done and what can be done to bring technological equality to the digital age.
Access to broadband today means the difference between first and second class citizenship. A broadband connection leads to better and cheaper access to healthcare, education, government services, and jobs. In fact, the state of Florida is moving to an online-only application for unemployment benefits for those who don’t have jobs. And unfortunately, a broadband connection is one of the last things people think about subscribing to when they don’t have a job.
But a subscription to a broadband connection will save both time and money. The unemployed Floridians without a home connection will have to travel to the library to apply for benefits. To pay a bill, those who are disconnected have to go to the post office, buy stamps, and physically mail them in even though such services are easily provided online. To renew a driver’s license, they have to take a day-long trip to the DMV when others can easily renew their licenses online. The extra steps that those who don’t have access are forced to take translates to gas money, bus fare, time off work, filing fees, and even emergency room bills.
Unfortunately, millions of Americans are still disconnected, and a disproportionate number are minorities. While the majority of the country – 68 percent – has adopted broadband at home, 50 percent of African American and 55 percent of Hispanic households have not adopted the service. And unfortunately, most minorities aren’t using the connections they do have for the beneficial reasons mentioned above.
The Digital Beloved Community book examines why such inequities exist – including the cost of service, the wealth gap, and a dearth of culturally relevant content. It also examines how to resolve these inequities to grant everyone in the nation access to this vital tool – including STEM education and encouraging minority entrepreneurship through incubators and the restoration of the tax certificate policy.
The book envisions a future where everyone has the ability to participate in our digital ecosystem. It exhibits an economy that enables innovative individuals from culturally diverse backgrounds to benefit equally from the technological advancements and innovations they create. Like Dr. King’s dream, the digital Beloved Community gains its strength from empowering every individual and thereby advancing the whole.
MMTC’s book not only explains what the digital beloved community is and why we need to attain it, but it tells the reader how we can achieve this future. It sets achievable goals using attainable solutions. In short, it’s a how-to guide for digital equality.
As you read our publication and think about Dr. King’s dreams for us all, we encourage you to also think about what you, personally, can do to bring about the digital Beloved Community.
Kurt Merriweather is the Director of Emerging Business Development at Discovery Communications. In this role, Merriweather is responsible for identifying and incubating opportunities that leverage new audiences, new products and new business models. Merriweather is currently forming a new organization within Discovery that will be dedicated to reaching the channel’s audiences across video, mobile and social media platforms. Prior to his current role, Merriweather worked as Discovery’s Director of Digital Media Business Development, as well as a business director for America Online and senior project manager for several companies.
Elijah Young is a serial entrepreneur who has had a hand in starting nearly twenty businesses since 2003. His most recent venture, 
Jose Mas (and his family) were our very first Multicultural Entrepreneurs of the Week when BBSJ was launched, and we believe he deserves the distinction again. Mas has been CEO of MasTec, a company that is building broadband and telecommunications infrastructure for the entire nation, since 2007. He is the latest in a line of Mas businessmen and women who have built the company from the ground-up into an employer over 10,000 people across the country. In the time since Mas has headed the company, its revenues have doubled and earnings have more than tripled. Last week, Mas was featured on the CBS reality show “Undercover Boss,” which follows senior executives as they work in disguise with lower levels of staff to learn about the inner workings of their companies and how they can improve upon them.
Apple computers and operating systems are widely considered safer and more secure than most other systems, an important factor for consumers in an age where hackers are running rampant online.
Unfortunately, Apple’s recent update to its latest operating system, the Mac OS X Lion, version 10.7.3,
included a security flaw that exposed passwords by storing them outside the encrypted area of users’ devices. When security researcher David Emery discovered the flaw last week, other experts provided tips for users to protect their data until Apple fixed the problem, including changing FileVault passwords and deleting the debug log file, named “/var/log/secure.log,” from the disk drive. Unfortunately, many consumers are simply not that tech-savvy, and they remained at risk until Apple released another update that addressed the problem.
