How modern society leaves many people behind

I work at a library in the blue collar Midwest. We get an extremely broad mix of patrons: everyone from families, to elderly people, to folks desperately trying to find jobs and who use our computers in order to fill out applications and create resumes.

I see so many people come in the library who have little idea about the very basics of using a computer. They don't know how to use the internet, they have no idea how to set up an email account, or use Microsoft Word.

One would think that by the year 2010, most people would know the basics of computer usage, but this is not the case. There are so many people who are being left behind by our increasingly technological world. I'm not just talking about older folks, either. There are people in their thirties and even a few in their twenties who struggle with new technology.

This is an even bigger issue recently because many companies and businesses only accept online applications. On Tuesday, a library patron, probably in his fifties, came in the library and told me with some degree of desperation that he needed help filling out KMart and Fazoli's applications on the computer. He was jobless, having been laid off some time ago, and had recently moved back to Michigan. This unfortunate man had rudimentary computer skills at best, and there was no way he was going to be able to complete these online applications, particularly when the Fazoli's application required a submission of an online resume. This man only had a paper resume, and there was no way I could explain to him how to create a resume on Word and save it to a flash drive. He had a hard time using the mouse, there was no conceivable way he was going to be able to create his resume on the computer--at least not in the limited amount of time I had to help him--and the hour and change he was alotted use of the patron computer.

The point I'm trying to make is that technology is advancing at such a speed that many people, most of them working class or poor, are being left behind. This is one aspect of the unemployment problem that does not seem to be discussed much by the media. Working in the public service sector of the library, for the first time in four years, has given me new appreciation for the struggles that so many folks experience in trying to find work, and desperately attempting to cope and survive in this rapidly changing world.