Achieve "justice for all" by applying the ATJ Technology Principles

Here is an interesting online readability tool. Not only does it give you
the scores, but it also suggests sentences that you should rewrite to
improve readability.

http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp

Information about each of the scales is available at
Wkipedia's Readability article

Thanks to Kate Bladow from Probono Net.

A temporary copy of the Report is available at here:
http://BrianRowe.org/ATJWeb Final Report V3.doc

The report will be added to the resources page by September 25th.

Please feel free to contact us with any comments on the report.

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The digital divide is the chasm separating the haves and have-nots in digital technology. On one side are people who can afford or who have access to computers, a high-speed broadband connection and the plethora of services from online banking to social networking to blogging. On the other side of the equation are people who cannot afford the technology, cannot get broadband access because of their location, or who have learning or cultural limitations to using the technology.

There are many digital divides including:
Rural and urban
poor and rich
African-American and white
old and young
disabled and able
developing nation and developed nation

All these factors have been studied and solutions have been debated for years. In fact, Martin Luther King Jr. talked about such a divide in one of his last speeches four days before he died in 1968:

"There can be no gainsaying about the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today…That is, a technological revolution with the impact of automation and cybernation…Modern man through scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance. Through our genius we have made this world a neighborhood. And yet we ­ we have not yet had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this."

Very few people remember a speech by President George W. Bush on March 26, 2004, in which he called for affordable broadband access for everyone. President Bush said.

“This country needs a national goal for the spread of broadband technology,... We ought to have universal affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007 and then we ought to make sure, as soon as possible thereafter, consumers have choices when it comes to their carrier.”

As 2007 dawns, we obviously do not have universal affordable access to broadband, and consumers have little choice for providers outside of the duopoly of cable and telephone carriers.

Read more at:
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/01/digging_deeperyour_guide_to_th.htm...
[SOURCE: Media Shift, AUTHOR: Mark Glaser]

THE POOR WILL ALWAYS BE WITH US
[SOURCE: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, AUTHOR: Steve Rendall and Neil deMause]

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, 37 million Americans ­one in eight ­lived below the federal poverty line in 2005, defined as an annual income of $19,971 for a family of four.

Poverty touches a far greater share of the population over the course of their lives: A 1997 study by University of Michigan economist Rebecca Blank found that one-third of all U.S. residents will experience government-defined poverty within a 13-year period.

The poorest age group is children, with more than one in six living in official poverty at any given time. Yet despite being an issue that directly or indirectly affects a huge chunk of the U.S. population, poverty and inequality receive astonishingly little coverage on nightly network newscasts. An exhaustive search of weeknight news broadcasts on CBS, NBC and ABC found that with rare exceptions, such as the aftermath of Katrina, poverty and the poor seldom even appear on the evening news -- and when they do, they are relegated mostly to merely speaking in platitudes about their hardships.

Read more at FAIR: Poverty Undercovered in Network News: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3172