Sakura Star — Digital Divides Project
The task of making an origami Sakura Star without the aid of technology sounded impossible at first. After some hard thinking on how I would obtain such information, I remembered that one of my best friends from home, Nick, was really into intricate designs with origami. Whenever there was a piece of paper lying around, he would make a little animal out of it. I went home over the weekend and Nick came over to my house, where I asked him about his background with origami. Nick explained that he’s been doing origami for many years because his family, coming from a Chinese background, taught him. He also explained that origami is just the Japanese word for “zhezhi”, or “paper folding” in Chinese. After listening to Nick’s story, I asked him if he knew anything about a Sakura Star. He explained that a Sakura Star is a lot more complicated than what he usually does with origami, and that I should practice with smaller designs instead, but he knew how to do it!
Nick told me the only materials I would need were a square piece of paper and a pencil to make it a little easier to remember where to make folds. All I had at my house was computer paper, so I measured a piece of paper with a ruler, cut it into an 8.5” by 8.5” square and I was ready to go. I began following each of his steps, which were very clear. He made sure to go over some of the trickier folds multiple times so that I could get it right. At first, It didn’t seem that difficult. I was making my folds almost perfect until I had to start using the pencil. He showed me exactly where to draw the lines so that I knew where to make the folds. The pencil was a good suggestion because I had no idea where I was folding at that point. After folding onto the lines I had just drawn, there were some extremely confusing folds he had made which I had a very hard time even comprehending. At one point, when I had a little design that looked like a star with a pentagon in the middle, I could no longer comprehend what he was doing at all. Eventually he gave up on me and reminded me that I needed to learn the basics of origami before jumping into something so complicated. I understood where he was coming from, because if I had done some origami before attempting the Sakura Star, it probably would have looked at least a little familiar.
My experience really shows that digital divides have a big impact, even on kids today. Both of Nick’s parents were born in China at a time before the internet existed, and for entertainment and artistic purposes they learned origami. This art was passed down to Nick through culture, he did not learn it via digital technologies. Much like in Communities, Cultural Capital, and Digital Inclusion: Ten Years of Tracking Techno-dispositions and Techno-Capital, it’s interesting to read the different experiences of parents, in terms of technology, to those of teenagers today. Nick’s parents weren’t exposed to the huge influence of the internet as they were growing up, so Nick was taught that culture and family should be main sources of knowledge. Both of my parents are Irish and were born in America, so I didn’t have any access to the knowledge of origami. Had I not had Nick to teach me anything, I would have been completely lost and that really showed me how dependent I am on digital technology. There is a strong digital divide when taking into account traditional cultures and technological use growing up. Personally, I rely much more on digital technologies because as I was growing up, I was taught how to use so many different digital technologies to my advantage, whereas someone like Nick was taught to use different resources. The digital divide really became clear to me when I realized that I actually required the internet to learn origami effectively.
