Digital Dorks: Maybe Lots of Them?
February 24, 2010
I was amused with the Wall Street Journal’s “free” article called “Nearly 20% of US Is Digitally Uncomfortable or Digitally Distant, FCC Says.” Some folks, according to the Federal Communications Commission, are not hip to online. If not hip to online, I wonder if these segments read books, subscribe to magazines, and frequent the local library to lap up information.
In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the schools struggle to crank out students who can read. The low level of reading skill may be different where you live, but I find it disturbing. Also Harrod’s Creek is enlivened on some mornings with the sound of gun fire. Avid hunters pursue squirrel (tree rats in the local jargon), deer (rats on hooves), and geese (not sure if I am a rat or not) with enthusiasm. My network access is flakey and the throughput sucks. I have to high speed lines, so unless it snows or rains or is windy or is foggy, the data creeps through.
Why then would it be surprising that in Kentucky and similar states, there would be a large chunk of folks who are digitally different? I think that online for some folks means using an automatic teller machine for cash, not surfing LexisNexis.
Among the factoids in the write up that impressed me were:
- The digitally distant make up 10 percent of the US population. Figure 320 million people. The distant folks amount to 32 million.
- The digitally uncomfortable account for another 10 percent. That’s another 32 million people.
That means that 64 million people are not going to be into online like this addled goose. What happens when we consider the appetite for reading and the unemployment rate”? What about the dependence on video games, Twitter, and TV for information? What about the loss of local bookstores? What about the decline in local radio and TV news coverage? Yikes!
For me, it means that knowledge workers comprise an important but probably very tiny segment of society. So when we talk about search and nifty gadgets like the forthcoming Apple iPad, I wonder if the spectacular growth numbers associated with online and tech-based services are sustainable.
Even more interesting a question is, “Will search systems shift from user generated queries to predictive pushing of information?” The idea is that some people may be too busy or simply unable to formulate a query for the information needed to perform a task. Why search? Just take what gets pushed to a person with a question.
Finally, with the information revolution going on for decades, what happens to the organizations who have not yet mastered electronic information? Into what category do these people and their organizations fit? Maybe we need a new segment for digital dorks? Just a question, not a real assertion.
Stephen E Arnold, February 24, 2010
No one paid me to think up the phrase digital dorks. I will report non payment to the Council on Literacy.
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