Digital Inequality and Access to Technology
A reflection on our desire for innovation and purpose.
Keeping up with the readings on the topics of Media Literacy, Inequalities and Inclusion turned into a real challenge because I wanted and actually tried to read all of the texts provided. I believe that media literacy and inclusion is a current issue that is playing a part in today’s media challenges and its dark ability for deception and manipulation.
Digital media is still relatively new to our society, and the pace of technology development has been so quick that human beings as a society have not been able to match. Minorities that don’t have access to technology or have no knowledge about how the digital media world works tend to be easily manipulated, to believe the dissemination of fake news, and be a step behind in their professional lives. In an era of unprecedented development where corporations like Google, Apple, or Microsoft are launching products that the 1% can play with, we are leaving behind a vital function of technology and its main purpose: to improve the lives of society as a whole. I believe that living up to this promise demands more focus on implementing technology to increase the efficiency of local governments and find ways to improve inclusion for those with no digital literacy skills to avoid leaving them behind. And that starts by using and teaching tech to the service of minorities or social groups with few digital literacy skills. As is usual with my reflection posts, this text is focused more on my individual perspectives that arise when doing the readings rather than an objective review of them, so I want to provide an example by sharing the stories of Lauren Jong who left Google to work on local government, and the experience of my mum, Rosangel Navarro, who teaches technology to older adults and people with disabilities.
Technology and design to the service of the common good.
Lauren Jong was a UX designer at Google in 2017 until she took the controversial decision to leave a well-paying job at the pinnacle of technology to work in local government. She talked about her reasons on her only medium post but here are my takeaways:
I myself was inspired by City employees. They were motivated, eager, and excited. They had a vision of the future where technology could help them deliver critical services to the public.
The services that government provides are often basic needs that the public must have access to. Sometimes they aren’t optional, and sometimes there aren’t alternatives in the market (or the alternatives might not work for all people). Government agencies exist to offer these. Utilities, marriage licenses, construction permitting, public records, transportation, immigration assistance, public health guidance — the list goes on.
At Google I worked on products like Google Wallet and Android Pay that helped people make payments in stores and online. While paying with phones was clearly the way the world headed, the work I was doing didn’t feel like it was going to meaningfully impact people’s lives. Our users were already able to pay for things, and we were attempting to make it a bit more efficient or enjoyable.
People rely on government services. Through user research as a designer in government, I have encountered people who only get internet access while at the public library. And people who dial 311 to have a human operator tell them when the next bus is coming.
This statements pretty much sums up the importance of applying digital innovation to help improve services that people relies on. While the advancements in technology that brands like Google are making are paving the way on the future, it is as important to find a use beyond commercial value and the acquisition of commodity tools to our homes.
Using technology to improve the services citizens rely on is an important point that might sound contradictory to the lack of digital literacy and the so called “digital breach”. How can technology help people who doesn’t know much about technology? This is one of the things we touched on when doing a special interview with my mum, who teaches digital and technological skills to elderly and disable people and experiences this digital breach first-hand. Most of the fascinating technological advancement are usually designed to be as easy as possible to use. It’s a principle used by communications professionals and UX designers: get a complex idea and show it the most simplest way possible. This idea allows technology to make non tech savvy people survive on daily life, where pretty much everything is digitalized these days.
The Digital Gap
I asked my mum what were the challenges the minorities she teaches face on daily life? What, in your experience, has been the main issue when teaching digital skills to older adults? and finally what do we need to do to reduce this digital gap? Is AI going to help or provide yet another challenge for its extreme ability to create realistic fake stuff?
My mum started explaining the impacts in daily life of people with no digital literacy or access to technology. It goes beyond lack of access to tools, information, or ability to spot fake news. In an increasingly digitalized world, she has seen how some of her students experience challenges just in routine daily life activities such as going to the bank or paying with credit cards. They are suddenly challenged by routine tasks that they don’t know how to use and are left behind socially, without mentioning the psychological impact of thinking you can’t adapt to society. A funny example is my grandma, who is 77 today (happy birthday!!) and owns all kinds of social media. My mum usually has digital lessons with her explaining why she shouldn’t believe everything she read because it is not like reading a newspaper.
Around 90% of jobs nowadays require a computer, and knowledge on how to use its software. Most of the people with no digital literacy were used to a different world where the way to do things was different, and for people with disabilities this lack of digital literacy only creates even more barriers to access the workforce like if they didn’t have enough challenges.
After mentioning a few other facts that provided slap after slap of reality, she revealed an important fact about the Digital Gap moving forward in the future:
What we today call Digital Competencies in academics was previously called alphabetical competence in digital and provides a clue about not only the scale of the issue but a path to fight against it. We always teach people how to write and read, regardless of age or condition, so we have a responsibility to do teach people n our society how to write and read in technological terms she mentioned.
It only takes one conversation to understand the other side of the coin. The same way technology brings us new possibilities, it can become even a bigger barrier to already affected minorities. Technologies like internet and software continues to have a high cost for many communities who would rather eat than buy internet or a laptop.
When asked about Artifical Intelligence in the Digital Gap, Rosangel agrees that is like any other digital innovation that has been adopted worldwide, a tool that can have amazing benefits (Imagine a disabled person who needs to write a document, AI can become the perfect assistance. However, in every use of AI needs to be addressed with legal guidelines, rules and ethical considerations to avoid the dark side of AI prevail, not to substitute the human but using it for deception).
After this conversation I realized that the Digital Gap must be treated with global authorities at the same level of other issues such as food waste, cultural integration, etc. because technology is a big part of society that is here to stay and become even bigger, and it will become as important as the ability to read write and talk.
