Getting Ahead of The Emerging Meta Divide

Historically, people of color have fallen behind in the wake of technological advancement. From the dawn of the consumer web, to Web 2.0 — The technical gap that forms from the lack of speed to adopt, leverage and forward technology within the black community is always problematic. There are a vast amount of reasons why this happens, however; at the forefront of the reasons, there rest the simple idea that as a people we are in large part “consumers” of technology and we are usually 3–5 years behind when it comes to seeing the business application of the tech we consume.

Through the evolutionary cycles of the internet, we have seen two very defined shifts in how we leverage its resources. The first was the shift from Institutional/science based use to what I like to call the “consumer web”. We went from HUGE interconnected servers that connected with each other to exchange scientific research or data between people and organizations. The internet was NOT sexy, and there was very little consideration around design, because at that time design was just a “nice to have”. The consumer web delivered on the promise design, commerce and consumer facing tools and applications. While information was still a major part of the internets narrative, the ability to “transact” was the primary “business” application. This was the “username and password” internet … The next shift took us…