The internet described by prisoners who have never seen it

Justine Sharrock asked prisoners incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison to describe the internet. The men had just taken part in a program to help them reintegrate into society, and though they hadn’t used the internet themselves, they had more of a theoretical understanding of it. Chrisfino Kenyatta Leal entered prison in 1994:

I envisioned the web to be like this infinite space filled with information about everything under the sun.

I was confused about how you got from one piece of info to the next and I was clueless in terms of the lingo used to describe it all…

The technical aspects of it make me go, Hmmmm? I realize everything is getting faster and moving toward mobile, so I often wonder about who’s doing all this stuff and where is it all taking place?

• Justine Sharrock
• prison