Absolutely. We have come to know a couple of guys, one ex-homeless, who have real troubles here. We lent one an old iPad and that, together will free wifi in coffee shops and malls, has enabled him to talk to government agencies and job centers.
http://dclibrary.org/services/computer
Things like this will make a big difference. The email thing, as an IT guy full-time, blew my mimd. Many of my students were not stereotyped homeless people, but frustrated people with low incomes and dead end jobs. Some of them really lit up as you showed them how to spend all free time that could be invested in free education and researching better job opportunties. I only wish I had stayed longer volunteering there to make a real difference.
I hope other places start digital literacy courses.
That's cheap enough that there's no reason for a poor person NOT to have one.
Jack Monroe was poor and a blogger. She wrote a powerful piece about it once: ( http://agirlcalledjack.com/2012/07/30/hunger-hurts/ ):
> This morning, small boy had one of the last Weetabix, mashed with water, with a glass of tap water to wash it down with. ‘Where’s Mummys breakfast?’ he asks, big blue eyes and two year old concern. I tell him I’m not hungry, but the rumblings of my stomach call me a liar. But these are the things that we do.
> ...
> Then you start to take lightbulbs out. If they aren’t there, you can’t turn them on.
> ...
> Poverty is the sinking feeling when your small boy finishes his one weetabix and says ‘more mummy, bread and jam please mummy’ as you’re wondering whether to take the TV or the guitar to the pawn shop first, and how to tell him that there is no bread or jam.
These are the people who can't afford $44.
When you're functionally illiterate and have spent a few years living on the streets, are not good with money, and have a generally chaotic lifestyle, then you may well not think about going to your local supermarket to buy a cheap tablet (even if you know what a tablet is)
For some folks, their lack of ability to cope with (and fit into) modern life is truly incapacitating.
Plus if you are living a chaotic life, keeping hold of something like this, keeping it secure, dry and charged can be a mission in itself. And when times are hard what is going to be the easiest way to get some money (for bus fare to that job)...
So yes, if you are in the right location, with the time and means to get to an open wifi connection, and have the spare money to buy a tool like this, then awesome. But a lot of people aren't.