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The Digital Detriment – A Minority Report for Digital Exclusion?

The scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise walks through the adverts but with somebody else’s retina scan has become iconic. Advertisers argue that they are only giving us those things in which we are interested hence Facebook knows what you like but Google knows what you want whereas Amazon knows what everybody like you had. We have to take stock of what we are bringing into the living room when smart TV’s arrive complete with apps and channels controlled by app providers not independent broadcasters. Take this a step further and consider the Minority Report for the range of digitally excluded groups, not just those with skills and access issues; when the internet speaks to them personally when they struggle with personalized health care for instance how will their decision making be influenced?

Unpicking Personalised Learning

I owe everything I am to my parents; they saw to it that I had an education. I went to one of the early comprehensive schools where the ideal of equal opportunity for all set the baseline for what we did. Being the 60’s we were “banded” then “streamed” this was the time of the 1940 Education Act. I left there with 10 average ‘O’ levels and 2 good A levels and my parent saw to it that I went on to higher education. I returned after my first term, an alien. Suddenly nobody spoke the same language, I was adrift. In 1974 I emerged, the product of a Christian socialist education and entered the teaching profession. Hold that thought.

Back to Basics Get The Inclusion Initiative Right

In 2011 Citizens Online and Penval undertook work to identify the potential for digital inclusion projects in parts of Glasgow. To those who have worked in the digital inclusion arena for a while the anonamised extract below would seem to be a statement of the obvious; yet, when the headline is the British obsession with smart phones rather than the exclusion of a whole sector of society then perhaps it is time to revisit the basics.

Therefore it’s unacceptable….

It’s a fair question, isn’t it? Government invests all that money in local government IT; then supports all of that community based activity: digital inclusion advisers, digital mentors, UK Online Centres, Race Online 2012; what does it get for its money?

Dear Cisco

I’ve been following @ciscosp360 for a short while, they followed me and every now and again they say something really interesting but on Wednesday night they started broadcasting and I pointed out to them that, well, it’s not necessarily the best way to engage. Clearly I hit a nerve – oops! I feel I owe them an explanation.

Digital Inclusion & Public Value – Have the States Got IT?

Broadband Infrastructure must be one of the few public procurements where form does not follow function. Form rules in terms of technology, there are wireless champions, cable champions, and fibre champions yet nobody seems to be sitting down to consider exactly what it is we want to deliver. If speed were a commodity then everything would be fine, everybody agrees that they want speedy communications but given that we are embarked upon a significant public spend ought we to not at least debate what we are looking for in our communities?

Digital Inclusion – Time for a rethink?

Is it time we re-evaluated what we mean by digital inclusion? Should we be asking ourselves the question in what are we including people? Is the set of values that underpin our approach to getting people on line rooted somewhere in the past and have we reached the point where we should be moving away from the ‘get everybody on line to access services’ approach and rethink along the lines of public value creation and design?

Enter The App

The route to digital inclusion is becoming a matter of political choice: people are being included in what? A set of values, becoming one of us? Having access to the means of production? Gaining access to a channel of expression shared by like minded people? It’s no longer enough simply to say that people need to be digitally included so that they can access services or access skills; by becoming digitally included they are also being invited to take on a whole set of social values as well. There are implicit assumptions that people will want to shop in a certain way, book holidays, and communicate with people who do similar things in a similar way. Is that what digital inclusion looks like to those whose networks are survival networks? Is this one of the reasons why we fail to engage so many in the digital inclusion agenda because we are bringing with us a set of social values that are irrelevant? Are we including people in a way that is enhancing their survival networks and empowering them to deal with their own issues or will giving them them a phone and telling them to use the app just maintain a social and digital divide?

Big Society Digital Challenge

Like impatient children on a long journey we say “are we there yet?” To which the reply comes, “nearly” but should we be asking what else should be changing along the way? I’m a digital optimist: I believe that digital technologies can change lives though for me that means tackling the barriers to change at the organisational level. Digital politics are deeply embedded in the social fabric and shifting the balance in favour of the majority will not come quickly or easily.

The Big Digital Society?

The new localism waits in the wings ready to challenge the established order of local government and service delivery. It is about to disrupt the raison d’être of the established third sector and it is opening to door to new forms of organisation and individual action. Perhaps now, the potential for digital inclusion will play a part in the empowerment of communities and crowd accelerated innovation with become the accepted norm.