Two events today reminded me how modern US communication technology is leaving the poor, outcast, elderly and ill behind. One was a friend of mine who has no computer or printer in her house. We made arrangements to go to a local university next week to hear a speaker. We both called for reservations since the new way of getting in on free talks for public at a university to public is to call. We both called and left messages on a phone. We got call backs that we were registered. However, than I got a call asking for email address since the admission tickets would be emailed to me and I could print it out. A little while I got another call from the same friend saying he could not reach my friend but asking for her email address so he could email her a free ticket. I explained that my friend had a smart phone but no computer and printer. He said he would email her ticket to me and, after a couple tries, he did.

An 86 year friend of mine was very hard to reach by phone, her only communication device with outside world. Finally she answered the phone yesterday and explained to me that her phone was only able to receive calls but not make ones. We made arrangements to meet the next day but when I called her back with a change of time I was greeted by an automatic message saying her phone number was changed and it was unknown. I went over to her house to check on her and found her with no phone service. The phone is important to her for many reasons, one, being her 114 year old mother in Florida would get help calling her at her number.

After spending over an hour with three AT&T officials I found out it had something to do with her billing. I said I would work on it with her today after we got back from our scheduled appointment. When we got back, however, my alarm on cell phone rang reminding me that I need to pick up my Goddaughter from school today. So I took some bills she had found and said I would be back tomorrow. It looks like someone, perhaps accidentally, ran up some big bills for services she does not use. She only uses the phone to make local calls and to receive local and other area calls like from her mother and friends.

I have ran across this same situation with my own phone and with phones and communication equipment of friends who are not technology acute and cannot spend the many hours of frustration it sometimes takes to get to human beings that can solve your problem.

It used to be and still is that lack of car handicapped the poor and ill. Now it is modern means of communications. Our world of communication technology, text, emails, tweets, internet connected computers and printed is leaving people behind and make it “harder to be poor.”

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