Daniel Davies

Pete Ashton, of Ash-10 wrote, in my opinion, one of the cleanest and best argued definitions of Digital Literacy I've seen. He suggests it be more than just uploading a photo (i.e. using a service) and more about being able to create and manipulate (i.e. understand). In a general sense, I couldn't agree more with his definition!

But do we actually need to be digitally literate to have a digital Britain? Is it simple to make people digitally literate? Have we failed to take in to account wider issues here?

The assumption that programming (I hit on this because its what I understand) is "fundamentally simple" seems to be naive, and fails to account for the number one factor in what makes a programmer a good hacker or a poor hacker; aptitude.

Programming may be simple in terms of code; functions, ifs and fors (i.e. algorithms), but its aptitude that will allow a person to know when to use each properly. The natural ability to distill the solution to a problem in to algorithms is not a barrier we can just break down, nor is it one we need to. Its a way the mind works. Simply put; some can, some can't. And this isn't a bad thing! Not having to worry about being digitally literate will actually make things more accessible, and easier for people to use. Its the reason why so many web developers around the world dedicate so much time to producing free apps and open source software - so that people can enjoy the benefits whilst abstracting the nitty-gritty understanding. Not spending time making people digitally literate, but making it so that they don't need to be.

Why does the administrator of a neighbourhood forum need to have digital literacy? Would he be expected to know the ins and outs of optimisation, load balancing, caching, database management, testing, future-proofing, scaling, etc? Would he not be better just downloading a piece of free software and running that, not worrying whether he is literate or not? Would he not prefer to stick to what he knows (i.e. his community) and not worry about the wider issues?

I couldn't agree more that it would be nice (idealistic perhaps) to remove all these barriers from the web, to make everybody literate. But it just can't happen - there's too much to think about, and we should be content with this ignorance. This is the reason we have an entire industry that provides these services. If we make it easier for people without the natural aptitude for this stuff to jump in to the deep end then won't that lead to a very buggy web with lots of digitally literate prople failing to fully understand the wider issues simply because they lack the natural aptitude? Would it dilute the quality? Convincing people without aptitude that they need to be literate, to attempt to force this understanding on people is not going to break the barriers, it will deter people and create greater divides.

My mother is not digitally literate, nor does she have the aptiude for it. She does have a website though, and uses email. I'm pretty sure she can upload a photo to Facebook too. She extracts great benefit from the web as a user. I see no reason to try and burden her with becoming digitally literate, nor does she have the will to become so. If I try and tell her she needs to learn the basics of HTML to be able to tweak her site she'd wonder why she's doing that instead of running her business.

I'll try to sum this up with an analogy. I want freedom to travel anywhere in the country, to see friends and to socialise. But I don't have the aptitude to build a car. I don't understand the physics, I could never explain to you what a G is, or how its affected by aerodynamics. I could try and make a car, sure. But it would be a bit rubbish. You see, I'm not a professional car making person. This is why if I wish to have the freedom to travel anywhere in the country I buy a car, from someone who has thought about all this for me. Buying things I don't understand, and being content with my ignorance is how the economy is supported.

The Government does not need to make us mechanically literate to give us freedom to travel. So why must we all be digitally literate to have freedom online?