Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: digital divide

  • Dealing with the corporate digital divide

    Dealing with the corporate digital divide

    It’s fashionable when talking about the ways different generations use computers to split users into two groups – the digital natives and digital immigrants.

    Born after 1990, digital natives are believed to have an intuitive understanding of digital technologies born from never having known a world without computers.

    Digital immigrants on the other hand are from an era where computers were not common outside big corporations and government departments, so most people born before 1990 had to learn to use computers.

    like many similar demographic divides, the line between digital immigrants and natives is contentious and probably more unhelpful than useful.

    A fascinating question though is whether corporations can be digital natives and immigrants.

    One of the challenges for older corporations, the corporate digital immigrants, are the legacy business systems that have their roots in the pre-digital era. A good example of this is United Airlines which struggles under inflexible management and old aircraft which can’t provide the levels of service and reliability expected by modern customers.

    A similar problem faces retailers who’ve haven’t invested in modern logistics, point of sale and online commerce systems – these businesses simply cannot compete with those who have up to date technology.

    Part of this problem comes from the difficulties in upgrading both technology and management systems in complex organisations, it’s not an easy task and the cost of failure is high so it’s understandable that many businesses don’t attempt it.

    In the meantime there’s the corporate digital immigrants, the more recently founded businesses that aren’t weighed down by legacy management and technology.

    The problem for the legacy businesses is the digitally native companies are able to take advantage of cheap and powerful tools that older organisations struggle to integrate into their operations.

    So the digital native-immigrant divide could be actually a business problem rather than one of how different generations discovered computers.

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  • Do kids really need laptops in school?

    Do kids really need laptops in school?

    Are laptop computers really essential to educating our kids? Fairfax media reports this weekend that the Australian Federal government’s laptops in education scheme is near collapse.

    What stands out from the story are the quotes from educators;

    Chatswood High School principal Sue Low said her school was providing laptops to students in year 9 but the uncertainty over future plans was unsettling.

    “Laptops are now just as much of the culture of education as are pens and paper,” she said. “To not have certainty over how we will administer laptops to our students is very disruptive, and we need that certainty as soon as possible.”

    Some schools have come up with their own solution to the problem. One NSW school has made arrangements with a private provider under which parents can buy a laptop for $1341 or rent-to-buy for $90 with monthly payments of about $50.

    That computers are important is not a debate, but are we putting to much emphasis on the tools and not enough on what education is trying to achieve?

    One educator said a decade ago that they could teach an 80 year old to use a computer in a few hours, but an illiterate 15 year old may be lost for life. This is truer today than it was then.

    Computers are flooding our lives with information and the tools to gather that information are intuitive and don’t need 12 years of school to master.

    What we are all need are the critical and mathematical skills to filter out the dross and misinformation that floods onto our screens.

    Old and young have the belief that if something is on the web, then it must be true. The biggest challenge for parents and teachers with the web is convincing kids that cutting and pasting huge slabs of Wikipedia into an assignment isn’t research.

    Not that this is just a problem in the classroom – plenty of politicians, business leaders and time poor journalists have been caught out plagiarising Wikipedia and other websites.

    In recent times I’ve been to a lot of ‘future of media’ events where the importance of ‘data journalism’ has been raised. What really sticks out listening to these is how poorly equipped both young and old journalists are to evaluate the data they’ve gathered.

    This isn’t just a problem in journalism – almost every occupation needs these skills. We could argue those skills are essential for citizens who want to participate in a modern democracy.

    Computers, and coding skills, are important but we risk giving students the skills of today rather than giving them the foundations to adopt the skills of tomorrow.

    We also risk making technological choices that risk education departments, schools and kids being locked into one vendor or system.

    Giving every child a laptop is not a replacement for them having the critical, literacy and numeracy skills to participate in 21st Century society.

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  • The real digital divide

    The real digital divide

    The real digital divide isn’t between the young and the old; it’s between those who are prepared to explore new technologies and those who hide from change.

    We’re often told that there’s a divide between the “digital natives”, those who grown up with computers, and the “digital immigrants”, those who’ve had to learn about computers.

    In reality this isn’t true, the real digital divide is about being prepared to learn and explore the possibilities being opened up every day by the Internet and computers.

    I was reminded of this shortly before Christmas when talking to a group of forty year old business owners who dismissed Internet tools like Twitter and LinkedIn out of hand – “a waste of time” “just for kids” and “I tried and received Chinese spam” being a few of the objections.

    The contrast is the Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association who prove you’re only as young as the computers you tinker with. These seniors, some of whom were retired well before computers became commonplace, are prepared to explore and discover possibilities that change their lives and the lives those around them.

    The forty somethings all had successful businesses and they were the first to admit mobile phones, email and websites had changed the way they work. Yet nearly half of them didn’t have a website for their own business; a statistic consistent with business surveys that find almost 50% of small enterprises don’t have a website.

    In many respects these businesses and their owners are reminiscent of the handloom weavers of the early 19th Century. At first technology worked in their favour and pushed wages up but as industrialisation continued they found their skills redundant and incomes falling. Eventually their trades and businesses disappeared; which is what will happen to complacent companies and industries in today’s industrial revolution.

    A similar thing is happening to society and individuals. While you won’t disappear if you aren’t using the net, those who won’t will find it harder to do pay bills, communicate and simply get things done. Eventually they’ll find themselves marginalised as not being connected will make it harder for family and friends to keep in touch.

    All of this is unnecessary, it’s just a matter of being prepared to try and to give something a go. The real digital divide is between those who choose to give things a go and those who don’t.

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