Week 9 tasks

The 'digital divide' and its affects

As Wenger and Prensky state, society is at different level of skills and knowledge when it comes to new technology and the skills that come with it. This therefore can lead to problems occurring throughout society and even across the entire world as people fight to keep up with each other in the knowledge needed for the digital native generation.

In relation to socio-economic issues there are major concerns involving people's skills in new technology and how that can affect their livelihood. In today's generation businesses want staff who are up to date on technology and who have the knowledge to use these new technologies without any help. If a digital native and a digital immigrant went for a job interview, the most likely outcome would be that the digital native would get the job. This is down to them seeming more competent and therefore a better choice as they won't need any training or help to slot into the business and deal with technological issues on a daily basis. The digital immigrant is seen as older and therefore not as good at the job in hand.

I believe this is unfair as with a bit of training a digital immigrant could be even better at the job than a digital native as they are slightly older and therefore may have other skills that are useful at the job such as being more confident and having good people skills.

Affects across the globe

The main issue i see with technological differences across different countries is the lack of communication that could arise from this. If all countries were at the same level of technology then we could communicate with people in third world countries with ease and then there wouldn't be this image of these kind of countries being 'behind the times'. Unfortunately this isn't the case and some of these countries and regions are very isolated with no methods or funds to gain these sorts of new technologies.

Also, the difference in technology around the world affects the health system. I personally would not trust the health system in a third world country as they are not as well equipped with new technology and therefore are seen as less reliable. What do you think, do you think this is a justified statement? Or would you disagree?