We continue to promote technology without worrying whether people know how to use it, without helping them to understand how these new tools and functions can modify habits and behaviour. Imagine that we progressively substitute the old smartphones of all elders with a new smartphone, without explaining how it works … The elders will continue to use their new devices just to make calls, but find them less functional, more complicated and with a shorter lasting battery. And anyone who has one and has not enjoyed its advantages will discourage others from changing their smartphones.
The challenge of digital transformation is to attract people to change, to propose concrete experiences of innovation that can improve their quality of life. And we can help people to rediscover the pleasure of learning. We have to transform the challenge of reducing the digital divide into an extraordinary occasion to fight against functional and return illiteracy, a state that interests a large percentage of the adult population.
In the new article published on the Agenda Digitale, Mirta Michilli, the Director General of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, suggests a few urgent actions that would increase widespread and informal training through various flexible and mixed channels to reach everyone and allow anyone to learn anywhere (even through simple solutions such as the “Samuele’s Advice“ column). At the same time, we need to make device instructions clearer and simpler so that anyone can understand them.
Tutti i divari digitali dell’Italia: ecco perché la tecnologia crea nuove disuguaglianze (in Italian)
We know that technology can be an extraordinary tool to accelerate social inclusion. So, why is it creating new inequalities? Where are we going wrong? The challenge is to align the acceleration of digital transformation with the acquisition of skills, and not only digital ones.
by Mirta Michilli
Agenda Digitale, April 19, 2022
