Digital Divide, Then and Now

It’s hard to imagine that just a few decades back, the term “digital divide” had such a low bar, writes Danny Crichton:

“Facility with using computers was determined by the ability to turn it on and log in, a bar so low that it can be shocking to the modern reader to think that a “divide” existed at all.”

Sounds almost laughable today, right?

 

Is today’s definition of the digital divide as one between those who know how to write software (“code”) v/s those who don’t? After all, as almost all information is digitized, the need for almost everyone to be able to slice and dice it, to interpret, has increased. Knowing how to use the formulas in MS Excel is one such skill. But we also see the rise of what are called “no-code platforms”:

“These tools are designed to make it much easier for users to harness the power of computing in their daily work.”

Such platforms do most of the heavy lifting, you just need to point it to your data files, and tweak the settings so the platform knows which parts of your data to process:

“The success and notoriety of these tools comes from the feeling that they grant superpowers to their users. Projects that once took a team of engineers some hours to build can now be stitched together in a couple of clicks through a user interface.”

 

But, if you want to make the most of these tools, you need to know, if not coding (writing software), then at least something close to it:

“No-code tools often require code, or at least, the sort of deductive logic that is intrinsic to coding… You have to think in terms of data, and about inputs, transformations and outputs.”

 

All of which is why Crichton says the modern-day digital divide is between those who view computers and mobile devices as “consumption screens” (WhatsApp, YouTube etc) v/s those who look at the same as “tools of self-expression, research and analysis”. For kids, the same app can be of dual use: do they use Minecraft to just build structures, like digital Lego blocks? Or do they use it to write their own plug-ins (software that can be added onto Minecraft)?

 

In an earlier era, not everyone had a computer and even fewer had Internet access, so you could be on the wrong side of the digital divide and still not pay a high price because, hey, most people were like you. Not anymore:

“The specialized, almost arcane knowledge of data analysis and engineering is being widely democratized for this new generation, and that’s precisely where a new digital divide is emerging.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more