Scott Rains

Personal Biography:

“What do you want to be when you grow up?,” was a question that struck terror in my heart as a kid. I’d rather spend the day at the dentist than be cornered by the well-intentioned career counselors of my youth.

That’s probably because I didn’t know the job title for the position Gandhi held. Or, for that matter, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton or Dorothy Day.

But I did know that I wanted to be about what Gandhi called the “constructive project” even as I headed off, unchaperoned, in my first protest march while I was in eighth grade.

Later I spent ten years post-undergraduate in direct service on projects ranging from living with men on Skid Row in Seattle and adults with developmental disabilities in Syracuse, New York, to promoting a consistent ethic of respect for life in the cramped and ever-shrinking dialogue space between peace and prolife activists. For most of the next decade, I developed social justice programs and directed university ministry on various campuses. During that stretch technology access was a secondary concern at best.

That changed with the rise of the Internet and especially the Web. At that time I had been examining the models of community generated by Western Christian monasticism. It became natural, in that environment, to focus my doctoral work around a major text digitization and analysis project. This became the research tool on CD-ROM “The Rule of St. Benedict: Primary and Secondary Sources.” From there a foray into the for-profit world of software development created the opportunity to pursue a new dream – closing the Digital Divide.

Having done some technology education with faculty, students, monks and customers I found a whole new world open up as Manager for Computer-Assisted Education with a northern California developer of affordable housing. The sad adage that, "War is the way that Americans learn geography," took on a personal face as I worked with refugee adults and children who had fled turmoil and found shelter in the US. Bridging the digital divide worldwide, as a consequence of working with displaced populations here in the United States, is the theme of these past six years of my work in technology advocacy.

This month marks the 32nd year since I was paralyzed with a spinal tumor. Increasingly, the concerns of my own community occupy my thoughts.

Gains made in the past three decades are eroded through head-on assaults as well as that tectonic slippage of class where my community still remains at the forefront of the un- and under-employed. And this in spite of heroic efforts at closing the Digital Divide through innovation and Adaptive Technology. My work includes interventions designed to turn this trend around.

I am committed to pursuing the only "career path" that has ever made sense to me - the pursuit of justice on a social scale and the construction of the infrastructure required to guarantee it. I am reinforcing my work, together with an invigorating mix of entrepreneurs, activists, service professionals, philanthropists, designers, engineers, and architects, with the principles of Universal Design to bring new solutions to light.

Goals:

• I intend to use the network of relationships we are forging as a ZFellows class, as well as those available through the Community Technology Foundation of California, to strengthen and reshape my work.
• I am interested in examining, on a statewide basis, the best practices affecting the constituencies I work with.
• My interests lie in strategies that facilitate a new level of technology ubiquity for the populations I serve. The goal here is greater social participation. That may be through innovation in hardware and software distribution; localization of existing solutions; user education; industry/user/policymaker dialogue; or alliances with academia.
• California is a privileged worldwide fulcrum point which focuses thought leadership, industry innovation, and financial resource. My goal is to locate its handles of leverage for the constituencies I serve.
• Over the next three years I intend to bring the resources of Universal Design and Disability Studies into a new alliance with the goals of closing the Digital Divide and opening new avenues of social participation for the groups I work with.
• As a personal goal, I hope to establish a charitable foundation and investment fund that promotes the further theoretical development and practical application of the principles of Universal Design.