Education in Technology to Better our Nation

How Education of the Lower Middle Class will Save Society

The professor of my Society and Law class is spending his spring break with his son in Seattle Washington. They are traveling there to meet Bill Gates. My professor is a great orator and teacher, and there is never a dull moment in his class. He is a Harvard Graduate and has his doctorate in law. He is still a practicing attorney and partner at a large law firm as well as part time professor at the local community college. His firm has done work for Microsoft and being a Harvard grad he has another edge into the world of opportunity to meet such a man. I find the notion that he can go off and meet Bill Gates on a whim particularly frustrating to me.

Of course as an IT consultant and professional geek I am a little jealous, but it goes deeper than that. I can see through the initial hang ups and I am left with a simple truth. I am of the lower middle class Caucasian crowd; just high enough to be ineligible for financial assistance and low enough to have to create my own professional opportunities. Both of my parents work and are economically strapped. They cannot provide financial aid for their children’s college education. I do not complain to get a hand out and I am perfectly content on creating my own opportunities. There are plenty of grants and scholarships to pursue. I only seek to swim in the same circles, have conversations with the leaders of business, industry, and innovation. These are the opportunities of the elite. They must simply pick up the phone and schedule an appointment, where as I must build a small media network and crawl up the ladder of success just to be heard. Anyone can make it happen and I intend to prove it and inspire those who doubt their own potential and I intend to show them a world of infinite possibility.

I wish to provide the readers, contributors, clients, and everyone in general some hope and inspiration that they to can have big dreams and accomplish them. Dreams can come true even if you are not handed the opportunity by status, wealth, or social program. Politicians establish many programs to aid the poor, the majority of minorities, to gain votes; the hearts and minds of people, power, and political momentum. Politicians do not strive to help people across the board and certainly pay little attention to the lower middle class- there is no money and not enough votes for it to be worth their time, and so society continues to let the lower middle class fall to that of the poor through various economic and social programs. The lower middle class slips through the fingers of

Rather than just complain I provide a solution-A revolutionary concept in the world of politics & society I know. Rather than paying for a new car with the second mortgage on the house, or a new TV or whatever a person has worked so hard to get, you know that little piece of entertainment, gratification, or accomplishment, of which I speak, rather than buy that 50 inch screen, spend the money on an education. Do not just spend it on your kids education but your own as well. As a society we need to bridge the technological age-gap in order to compete in a global economy. In order to do that, we need our innovators to be armed with an education in technology.

I speak of the lower middle class getting educated simply because the upper middle class as a group seems perfectly content in staying where they are in society, however I do not wish to discourage anyone from bettering themselves through the programs I have created. The lower middle class is being lost and forgotten, falling to the status of near poverty. The poor have many voices and I will trust those voices to advocate for them.

The working class has not had the time I have been blessed with to spend growing up and mastering technology. I was born in 1985 and grew up seeing and interacting with the technological evolution of society. I could define moments in my life by Windows releases. I was able to witness the evolution of computing from the single celled organisms like MS-DOS and the first Mac equivalent to the creation of multi celled organisms with organs like kernels and GUIs, to the variable plethora of fully interactive Operating Systems of the present and future. I no longer ponder of what I can do with the systems of today but the specific and advanced applications of the technology 20 years from now. I and others like me can comprehend technology faster than they can come up with it.

My father works at least two jobs a day trying to create an environment for his children that is free of limitations, the world companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's would love them to see. He does not want his children to feel the financial pressures that they were born into; he wants them to worry only about bettering themselves through education. Corporations like the above suck up the lower middle class by coaxing them to buckle under the financial pressure. Instead of coming up with new ideas while they attend school, most self paying college students know only two environments; work and school; going nuts on their free time, spending their far to brief moments of freedom and limited financial resources on instant gratification; things that do not shape or change their futures and only serve as memories. Don't get me wrong, I am all for having fun, but I see what is happening to this land of opportunity and I see a calling.

That is why I am stepping up to the plate. This why I have created community projects like Lunch Hour Career Moves to help inspire and motivate the working class and Tech Immersion and Personal Digital Liquidity to educate and immerse adults, families, and children as young as 10 years old in the world of technology. These projects educate and give the communities inspiration and education something that has been lacking in society. There are many programs to help the poor get better jobs from flipping burgers to filing and typing, but I seek to boost that class into realms that create competitive markets in the world economy not just peak out at low level clerical work. It is my contention that we must not only leave no child behind, but also to raise up the lower middle class through education and innovation.

We are leaving the working man behind. People like my father are forced to take second jobs instead of using an acquired skill set in technology to have a single decent paying job. I want to see a society where only one parent has to work and another can actually raise their children. How modest a dream is it to desire the ability to raise your own children? I want to see a healthy middle class of innovators, designers, and bloggers and philosophers. If both parents must work I seek to give them a skill set that allows at least one of them to work from home. If we can get the lower middle class away from work and the employment slavery of Enron, Wal-Mart, and many many others, just for a moment to think about things, to learn about the world they live in, even for a single moment; I believe society would change and that it would be greater.

I believe that educating the lower middle class in the field of technology would solve many of society’s troubles today. Just imagine if you had an employable skill set that could land you a job where your spouse no longer has to work and you come home from only one job at 5PM. You would actually have time to just think, imagine, and study up on current issues including politics. You spend time in your garage working on ways to increase your car’s fuel economy or you are on your computer designing a website or contributing to a community project. Just imagine the possibilities. I don’t know if the political world would accept an idea that creates a society of educated, involved and concerned voters.

I have abandoned the safety of corporate enslavement in the retail industry to pursue a risky and yet fulfilling endeavor as an IT consultant. I know what it is like to slave away for 9 hours a day in the filthiest places of employment. I worked for K-Mart for a year, faithfully, to help pay for the tuition and other bills after graduating high school. It was a humbling experience, at the end of which I realized that corporations like K-Mart abuse humanity and emotion to suck more work and longer, harder hours at no extra pay, preying on their naïve employees and weeding out the intelligent ones. If you know someone who is in this situation or simply want a piece of mind, watch the documentary “Wal-Mart the High Cost of Low Price” (it is not focused on outsourcing rather than a corporate reality). While watching this program, remember only this: ALL RETAIL COMPANIES AND CORPORATIONS USE WAL-MART AS THEIR MODEL FOR BEST PRACTICES.

The Matrix Approach

Like the Matrix, these corporations and politics have created “a prison for your mind”, “a prison that you cannot see nor touch nor taste”. Most people are completely un-aware of the efforts of corporations and politicians go through to keep you from seeing the truth. These corporations do not want employees who think, they want naïve scared automatons, who believe that they cannot survive nor have safety or security without this system, without them.

On my lunch hour I began creating a new reality for myself, a reality of endless possibility. When I decided I no longer needed that system and I could have a better life on my own I was introduced to topics like quantum physics, books like Bruce Lee’s “Tao of Jeet Kun Do” the Dalai Lama’s “The Art of Happiness” and the “Wisdom of Forgiveness” and movies like “The Matrix” and “What the Bleep do we Know?”. These experiences lead me to the truth; that we live in a world of infinite possibility and anyone can make their dreams into a reality. They simply “need to let it all go, fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free your mind.”

Society today is devoted to helping everyone but the lower middle class and I seek to do something about it. I am trying to create opportunities for not just myself but anyone else in a situation in which they wish to better themselves. I run several blogs and spread my wealth as best I can and provide business opportunities for those who were not fed by the silver spoon. I do not shun the elite, well to do, or upper middle class nor do I envy the political attention that the poor receive; they are just living their lives the best they know how. If I or anyone else were in a similar situation would we not want to create the best opportunities for our children and ourselves? Of course we would. I only seek to compete in the world of the elite. I do not believe in boundaries or borders. All I ask in return is that people get involved in these projects, read the contributions, and get educated.