Does your family have a technology plan? We are currently honoring National Black Family Technology Awareness Week (Feb. 13-19). 

In light of that, I began wondering how many Black families actually have a household technology plan. Many of us have plans for everything in our household.

This week, I was made aware of another African-American woman who has created a mobile application. As the folks at McDonald’s like to say: “I’m lovin’ it.”
African-Americans need to get involved with these technologies and play in this space, and sisters are doing it for themselves, as they say.

I love to learn. I consider myself a lifelong learner. This is why I love to read. I feel that I can learn anything if I can get my hands on a book.

I am an avid reader of Jet magazine. As I was reading the latest issue of Jet I noticed that it has been re-designed and it has a fresh new look. As part of their new format, each week they profile an iPhone app. This is great. It would be great if Black newspapers followed suit.

I received an email from my nephew. His wife is a teacher. She has been charged with using a learning management system (LMS)  called Blackboard and he was trying to find information on using this new tool. In the message, he mentions that he went out to YouTube to find video instructions. Brilliant! I have taught programming classes online and asked questions of the students, and they have the audacity to reply “I don’t know”.  Look it up! My mother used to tell me that all of the time.

When I decided to become a software developer after finishing high school in 1982, I was only aware of one road to success, and that was attending college. If I wanted to land a job as a professional software developer, I needed to earn a degree in computer science.

I decided to write this article after I reading a post written by Navarro Wright on Black Web 2.0 entitled 7 Ways to Save a Young Boys Life with Technology. This article caught my eye because I have absolutely lived this premise. In fact, I gave a speech at Microsoft in March that I titled:  From a Life of Crime to a Beach Front Home, My Road to Success Using Technology.

The availability of jobs in information technology sector is picking up. Companies are opening their budgets and hiring is taking place again. A couple of months ago I might receive a call about a position every other day. Now I am receiving several emails per day asking if I am available.

Although I was keenly aware that Apple was releasing their new iPhone (iPhone 4), it completely slipped my mind as I headed over to the mall to pick up some new workout gear. But I was soon reminded as I bumped into a long line that extended from the Apple store all the way back to where I was entering the mall at the food court.

Now I am no stranger to witnessing a long line to get your hands on the latest life-changing technology from Apple, as I stood in quite a line to purchase my iPhone 3GS. But this line was longer than those I stood in to purchase any of my previous iPhones.

People were obviously prepared to wait a long time. Some had chairs. Some had their laptops, complete with a portable charging device. Of course some had iPads.

I have owned my domain name since 2000. A domain name is the name that comes after that @ in a person’s email address. For example, my email address is Kai.Dupe@kaidupe.com. The domain name is kaidupe.com. Other examples are Amazon.com, YouTube.com, Honda.com and AframNews.com. Since I own the domain, I can receive emails no matter what the email address as long as you use my domain name.

Recently I have received “Friend Requests” on Facebook from many of my high school classmates. My high school class graduated approximately 600 students in 1982. In the last few months, I have received at least 200 friend requests.
Only two came from my Black classmates. Why is that? Now to be sure, the percentage of Black students in my high school class was not very high, but there were certainly more than two.

Many of my friends are aware that I am currently doing research to answer the question: Why Are Blacks Underrepresented in Careers in Computing? Many of them do not feel that there is actually a digital divide. In fact, even my wife and I recently had a conversation where she informed me that she did not believe it was an issue and she cites that most of her friends are very active on Facebook.