Welcome to UCLA. Welcome Braddock Drive, Welcome Jane Addams of Lawndale, Welcome to Woodworth Elementary in Inglewood, Lennox Middle School, Compton High School, Dorsey High School, Roosevelt High School, Jordan High School, Toluca Lake Elementary, and our parents from Lynwood. And welcome to our guests.

Your presence is important because this is a public university. That means that your parents pay to support this university through their taxes. Because UCLA is a public university, those of us who work here have a responsibility to address the issues that affect the public. When we study problems in LA, problems in education for example, we need to reach out to those who know the most about these problems--young people around greater LA. We thus are honored to have you here.

Today's event is a summit on technological justice. What does it mean to talk about technology and justice? We'll be discussing the answer to that question throughout our meeting today. Before we get to your ideas, I'd like to take us back to one of the first and most eloquent statements about technology and justice.

On March 31, 1968, the Reverend Martin Luther King delivered his last Sunday morning sermon, a sermon he titled, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution." King told his parishioners, "A great revolution is taking place in the world today. ... There is a technological revolution, with the impact of automation and cybernation; ... then there is a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion that is taking place all over the world."

Martin Luther King wanted to use the changes created by the technological revolution to advance the cause of freedom in two ways. First, he argues, technology should "help us develop a world perspective"--an appreciation for our connections to other communities and other nations. Second, technology should help us "eradicate the last vestiges of racial injustice from our nation."

If you look at the back of your program, you will see a picture of Martin Luther King, peering out from behind at a group of computers from a poster. I hope that we will feel his presence today-calling on us to make justice a central theme of the technological revolution. In our discussion of the "Digital Divide", we will be talking about how access to computers can contribte to an 'explosion of freedom' right here in LosAngeles.

John Rogers is the Associate Director of IDEA.