[109472] in Cypherpunks
Okra and friends...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Thu Mar 25 09:19:18 1999
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 08:36:46 -0500
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
--- begin forwarded text
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 20:49:48 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Kanko <mkanko@yahoo.com>
Subject: Interesting aritcle (long)
To: train-hoppers@nw.com
Resent-To: train-hoppers: ;
Resent-Date: Wed, 24 Mar 99 23:01:47 PST
Resent-From: Mark Lottor <mkl@nw.com>
St. Louis Post-Dispatch - February 24, 1999
Cyberspace and Technology Beat
HOMELESS PEOPLE HOMESTEAD IN CYBERSPACE By Margie Wylie
Newhouse News Service SAN FRANCISCO --
Okra P. Dingle checks his e-mail most everyday.
Likehustling spare change, hopping freight trains or
scoping out a dry sleepingspot, the Internet has become
a regular part of his hobo lifestyle. Today, the 33
year-old Dingle -- he made up the name -- is hunched
over a computer keyboard in the airy atrium of San
Francisco's newmultimillion-dollar main library. He
wears roughly patched yellow overallsand sturdy work
boots. His army green backpack, festooned with Boy
Scoutpatches, beer logos, and duct tape, rests nearby.
The sides of his head areshaved smooth, leaving a patch
of orange-ish hair that tails off into ashort braid
that points up and down as he glances from keyboard to
screen.Plumbing-supply bracelets ting on his heavily
tattoed forearms as he pecksout e-mail messages. One is
a poem for his 16-year-old stepdaughter.Another goes to
friends inviting them to meet him in New Orleans.
They'reall homeless, too.``I do this in every city,''
Dingle smiles, the silver ball of a tonguepiercing
clicking lightly against his teeth, giving him a faint
lisp.``It's really catching on. You go to a library,
and I'd say about 30percent of people using the Net are
homeless.'''Dingle is one of a contingent of homeless
people homesteading cyberspace,thanks mostly to free
public libraries. For the most part, the homelessaren't
looking to cyberspace to change their lives. Like other
people,they're turning to the Net to make the lives
they have a little easier tolive.But their homesteading
has created dilemmas for librarians, who aregenerally
sympathetic and want to see their libraries open to all
kinds ofusers.``Ideally, anybody should have access to
the library, but realistically,I've heard of guys
coming in with cockroaches crawling out of their
bags,''said Cathy Camper, a librarian with the
Minneapolis Public Library. ``Oneguy passed out in
foyer and lay there face down for half an hour while
wewaited for the police and paramedics to come. We're
just not trained forthis. We're librarians.''About 2
million Americans were homeless for some period last
year,according to the National Law Center on
Homelessness and Poverty(http://www.nlchp.org) in
Washington. That includes everyone frompolitically
committed anarchists, like Dingle, to runaway teens,
familiesand, increasingly, the working poor. More than
20 percent of homelesspeople have jobs. A third are
veterans, a quarter are drug or alcoholaddicts, a
quarter are mentally ill.Nobody knows exactly how many
homeless people use the Net, but librarianssay their
ranks have grown noticeably in the last couple of
years.``As an interurban library we've always had
people coming in here smellingbad or looking
tattered,'' said Camper, the Minneapolis librarian.
``Ourlibrary has always been used in that way and the
Internet is just anextension of that. My sense is what
really changed things was Hotmail. Whenfree services
started popping up, that's when I noticed more
peopleregularly coming in.''Five years ago, Dingle, who
puts his poems and stories about life on theroad into
his photocopied 'zines, gave up a small gardening
business in Berkeley, Calif., and hit the road full
time. For transients like Dingle,the Net offers a
treasure trove of pointers and information on
``catchingout,'' or hopping freight trains. Hobos who
once communicated with scrawledsymbols on train
trestles now trade e-mail.Catching out has always been
dangerous and illegal. A rash ofthrill-seeking yuppie
jumpers armed with cell phones, laptops and
radioscanners brought down the wrath of freight train
operators on all riderswhen they published their
adventures on the Web in the early '90s. As aresult,
the most detailed train-hopping information is passed
on the Net asit is on the road: person to person. And
hoppers are careful who gets it.One guide tells riders
where to catch freight trains after they are out ofthe
yard, usually when they slow down and take on fresh
crews. It used tobe updated once a year, photocopied
and handed around. Now it and othersare circulated in
e-mail, but not posted where just anybody can see
it.``The advice can be really specific,'' Dingle said.
``Like, `Find a welcome mat in the weeds on the north
side of the yard; put your head on that matand look at
something hanging from a bush and from there, the
bull(railroad policeman) can't see you.'''Dingle's
circle also exchanges tips on which cities offer good
welfarebenefits, where to find friendly squats,
hotspots to avoid, even where tofind lightly guarded
Internet terminals on college campuses. ``Yesterday I
e-mailed a group of friends traveling around Spain,''
saidDingle. ``They probably don't know how to use a
calculator, but they canget e-mail.'' Dingle's life may
sound romantic, but day-to-day living can be
stressfuland boring for the typical homeless person,
said Chance Martin, a volunteerwith the San Francisco
Coalition on Homelessnesshttp://www.sfo.com/.875coh).
``The Net is an important release from that.It's
something where the user is in total control. It might
be the oneplace where the person has a lot of
options.''For many, the Net has become a touchstone of
normality, a constant inunpredictable lives.Taylor, a
25 year-old homeless woman, trundles a two-wheeled
basket overflowing with all she owns into the San
Francisco Library everyday.(Like many homeless Net
users interviewed, Taylor wouldn't give a lastname.) A
former office manager, she checks the weather back home
inWashington. ``Just to know what sort of day my father
is having,'' shesaid. ``Is it raining? Is he out in a
snow storm? It just helps me keepup.'' The Internet is
also her only source of news.``When you don't have a
place of your own, it's hard to keep up with what's
going on,'' she said. ``I try to come in here every day
and check the newsfrom, literally, around the world.
It's great.''Taylor was turned onto the Net by other
homeless friends. Dingle got hisfirst account when an
old hobo he met on a freight train took him to
theUniversity of Albuquerque's library and set him up.
Dingle returned thefavor before he left Berkeley: ``I
set up a HotMail account for these twotweaker (speed
addict) kids and I filled a folder with information on
trainhopping,'' said Dingle. ``They'll do it for
someone else, who'll turn onsomeone else. It's
exponential.''Homeless people take advantage of free
services in ways their sponsorsnever considered. Jim,
60, a San Francisco man who has lived out ofshelters
for five years now, uses his free Yahoo e-mail account
mostly as avirtual locker. He e-mails himself
addresses, notes, anything he wants tokeep but has no
place to store. Likewise, Dingle keeps his address book
inHotMail. And, when he recently lost a notebook with
four months of poemsand stories for his next 'zine, he
was able to get most of it back becausehe had e-mailed
his work to friends from the road.Jim is one of the 22
percent of homeless people who hold down jobs. He
usesthe Internet to find out more about the petitions
he is paid to circulate.``The first thing people ask
is, `Who's backing this?''' said the60-year-old former
office equipment repairman. ``I try to find out at
leastthat much before I go out.'' Many homeless people
go online just to talk. Discussion groups and chatrooms
let some escape, if only for a short time, the stares
and wrinklednoses they face on the streets.
Occasionally, the homeless will join inpublic
discussions of homelessness, but for the most part,
many go onlineto discuss politics, art, philosophy --
anything but homelessness.``It's like that famous
cartoon that says, `On the Net, nobody knows you'rea
dog,''' said Katherine Venturella, editor of ``Poor
People and LibraryServices.'' ``Well, on the Internet,
nobody knows you're homeless.''Yet, for a great many,
the Net is merely one more way to fill the hoursbetween
shelter beds.``Some just chatter and chatter all day
long. It's just a place to get outof the rain,
something to do, like the movies and CD players
downstairs,''shrugs Thom, 47. The lanky laborer from
Florida, said he uses e-mail mostlyto keep in touch
with his family back home.Shelters, food banks, and
advocacy groups are all online, but the offeringsare
still slim, said Barbara Duffield, director of
education for theNational Coalition on Homelessness in
Washington. She said she gets aboutsix e-mails a week
asking for help.The Department of Housing and Urban
Development is developing a nationwide database on help
for the homeless. Many communities have also
startedbuilding databases. San Francisco's Public
Library offers one suchdatabase, as do community
networks, including one in Eugene, Ore.The Metro
Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless
(http://www.leveler.com) hasautomated its shelter bed
registry and hopes to put it online soon, saidJosh
Dean, state coalition coordinator.Nonetheless, said,
Dingle, ``I don't know anyone who's gotten off
thestreets using the Internet.''Yet, in their own way,
many homeless people are reaping some rewards justfrom
being online.Take Don Paschal. Homeless in Santa Monica
in the early '90s, Paschal wassomething of a pioneer.
He communicated with city leaders through the
SantaMonica People's Electronic Network (PEN), an early
experiment in freeInternet access. His comments spurred
the city to start a program calledSwashlock, for
showers, washers, and lockers where the homeless could
cleanup and store their stuff while they look for jobs.
Today, the 43-year-old is working two marketing jobs,
one for an Internet startup. He lives in an apartment
in Sherman Oaks, Calif., thanks in partto the contacts
he made on PEN.Ironically, it was computerization that
helped nudge Jim, the officemachine repairman, onto the
streets.``I had no interest in computers,'' he said.
``If I'd known how much funthey were, I think might
have stayed in my job.'' Now, at 60, he'scontemplating
finding part-time work with his recently acquired
computersavvy. Not only does he log onto the Net at the
library, but he's alsotaken several free (non-credit)
computer courses at San Francisco CityCollege. ``I'd
like to work for a couple of years before I start
drawingSocial Security.''Dingle is using online
telephone directories to search for a mother hehasn't
seen since she abandoned him some 25 years ago.And then
there are less sublime uses.``One guy prints out grainy
black and white porno pictures and sells themto the
other guys on the street,'' said Camper.Other homeless
and formerly homeless people have learned to build
their ownWeb pages for free using services such as
Tripod (http://www.tripod.com) orGeocities
http://(www.geocities.com).Theodore Latham, who has
drifted in and out of homelessness himself
built``Tedricos,'' a Web page that covers every aspect
of living on the streetfrom panhandling to where to
find shelter.``Homeless People and the Internet''
offers homeless users an easylaunching pad. ``That's
the glorious thing about it, you don't have to betech
geek to build a Web site,'' said Paschal. ``It's a way
to expressyourself, of giving that person an
opportunity to say, `Here I am.'''Some urban libraries
have become virtual dumping grounds for homelesspeople
who have nowhere to go during the day. They've
struggled with thequestion of how to serve homeless
patrons without short-changing others.``The library is
the crack that people have fallen into,'' said
Camper,``The upper echelon of society doesn't really
have to use the libraryanymore so they just wash their
hands of it.''And that leaves Camper with situations
like this: ``There was a runawayteen-age girl who was
e-mailing people from the library and the policeasked
us to look for her. I don't remember what our answer
was, but moreand more we get stuck in the middle of the
fight and you don't know who toside with.''
_________________________________________________________
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--- end forwarded text
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
