hyalineskies

It’s certainly reinforced by parents daily that their children know more about their technological surroundings than their parents do. After all, it’s the children that have always placed their requests upon parents for the latest-and-greatest come Christmastime; and, since the late 80’s, it’s been everything from the Famicom/NES to the Xbox360, or even the increasingly-complex Tickle Me Elmo craze. Today’s American children have an insatiable want for everything tech, be it a new computer or even an electronic version of an old favourite. This technological prowess, be it as simple as operating a stereo or as complex as transcoding audio from an open-source format to AAC, continues to progress as children age as they grow comfortable learning new technologies or adapting old ones to new concepts.

Meanwhile, the parents of the said technologues, busy taking care of their expanded households as well as managing full-time careers, notice their children’s technological abilities as a form of communication that they, as elders, are ignorant of, either by lack of time or lack of interest. While these parents may use common technologies such as e-mail, simple Internet browsing, and in many cases instant messaging, many parents lack the ability to use computers in such ways; those that can are generally ignorant of higher-level or cutting-edge technologies such as social networking, peer-to-peer filesharing, or the ability to use advanced features in mainstream applications, such as Google or e-mail clients. With every new generation, we see an increasing disparity in this ability to use information technology, and the opportunity cost of teaching old dogs new tricks yields serious inefficiencies leading to the censorship of information via parental edict that set roadblocks on the route to the propagation and enrichment of today’s information environment.

Explaining information literacy

Instead of reinventing the wheel, terms exist for technological aptitude in the realm of library science. Jeremy Shapiro and Shelley Hughes outline and define degrees of the ability to use information technology as a slightly-archaic information literacy in the seminal 1996 article Information Literacy as a Liberal Art. Their seven categories of information literacy have lengthy definitions in the original paper; however, I’ll do my best to truncate the definitions for the purpose of this article.

Tool literacy is the ability to simply use tools relevant to one’s personal and professional life, be it the core human interface devices for computing or software such as operating systems. Shapiro believe,s although I believe insignificant in today’s high-level computing society, that this tool literacy should include algorithm theory, data structures, and protocols such as TCP/IP. More importantly, such “tool literacy” should be the ability to successfully use a computer for mainstream multimedia uses, as well as the ability to secure the machine from malware such as viruses and worms. Tool literacy is, simply, the core ability to use a computer competently, something which the majority of parents still fail to be able to do.

Resource literacy is the ability to “understand the form, format, location, and access methods of information resources.” In pre-Internet days, this corresponded to things such as the Dewey Decimal Classification system; now, resource literacy would correspond more with the ability to use resource indexing tools such as Google, LexisNexis, or any such Boolean-based advanced search tool. This may also include the ability to use tools such as information-sharing applications such as Gnutella, which index multimedia resources such as video and audio that social sites such as YouTube are just beginning to harness. (It is possible that Shapiro meant resource literacy on an even lower level, such as the ability to understand structures such as relational database systems and SQL, leaving search tools for a category he calls research literacy, which I’m omitting from this article as it’s less relevant.)

Publishing literacy, “the ability to format and publish research and ideas electronically,” has become increasingly important in today’s social media landscape. The explosion of tools such as Blogger, LiveJournal, and WordPress have opened Internet publishing to the masses at little to no cost, and as the blogosphere gains traction and influence, the ability to understand the methods of self-publishing become more important in understanding the reputability of self-published sources.

This ability to evaluate the integrity of information, defined by Shapiro and Hughes as critical literacy, is much more an issue of overall education than one for an older generation to learn; Shapiro and Hughes consider the history of the scientific method, classical philosophy, sociopolitical events, and multicultural, diverse comprehension of humanity as necessary for critical literacy. Because of this, the argument of critical literacy is far outside the scope of this article and requires an immeasurable amount of depth into trans-generational education and knowledge. Within the world of a child’s technological ability, this critical literacy generally corresponds to the ability to filter Internet content as reputable or dubious, beneficial or criminal; an example would be the ability for a member of a younger generation to distinguish a sexual predator from a normal person, or an obviously shady message board from a legitimate discussion zone. In some cases, this type of filtering is elementary, such as distinguishing spam from regular e-mail; in others, it is much more obscure, such as the ability to filter out phishing attempts. It is obvious that critical literacy is extremely broad even within generations from this definition; however, this limit to content filtering is of drastically narrower scope than Shapiro’s original definition.

A type of information literacy of increasing importance in today’s social media sphere is that of social-structural literacy, defined by Shapiro and Hughes as “knowing that and how information is socially situated and produced.” For parents, this certainly is one of the largest disparities in information literacy, as their children grow accustomed to using social networking tools such as MySpace or Facebook, YouTube, and friend-based media communities such as the aforementioned LiveJournal or even Xbox Live. For parents, social tools are still a primary enigma in the new information sphere, as it is unlikely that such tools are leveraged on a scale that provides value to the parent.

The other large disparity in information literacy between generations is that of emerging technology literacy, or the ability to adapt to new technological methods, interfaces, or concepts. This is much less a problem of the Internet age as it is a perpetual issue of humanity: older generations to date have seemingly been much more traditional, and moving old dogs to the new tricks has gained its proverbial status in a multilingual vernacular long before the onset of Internet technology. The only difference in the current age is that the inability to adapt to emerging technologies, either through personal neo-Luddism or preferential choices (i.e. adaptation is less interesting than the status quo) has an enormous impact on those people as the world of technology flies past them, ruled not by the linear scales of the Industrial revolution but rather the power-based formulae of Moore’s Law and Pareto distributions. The learning curve becomes increasingly steeper each day, and while younger, more connected generations maintain a competitive edge, the parents are left increasingly isolated in both the world of the next generation as well as the sphere of whatever content that younger generation creates.

An example: MySpace, the social enigma

This disparity in information literacy becomes evident on even the smallest of levels, currently rearing its cerberial heads on simple, popular tools such as MySpace. The social network has been the target of much controversy lately, as undesirables such as child predators have been using the network to target victims.

To an ordinary parent, social networking applications are almost entirely enigmatic; without the level of information literacy required to fully comprehend not only the use of but also the concepts behind social networks, parents are forced to stick to direct cognates of social networks to their own lives. Unfortunately, much of the network’s purpose is lost in translation: very few of one’s MySpace friends are actual friends, for example, and the parents are left confused as to why social networks are so appealing to so many anyway.

Of course, the day-to-day activity of the majority of MySpace’s 100+ million userbase is rarely discussed in the media, and those ignorant to MySpace’s social benefits are rarely informed of the size and scope of social network successes. Instead, parents learn of MySpace as some type of system in which a benevolent, juvenile population exists as a vulnerable herd for predators. While this certainly has proven to be the case in some instances, such negative interaction is statistically negligible in the broader scope of the application’s use by those with sufficient information literacy to comprehend and use the system.

Of course, the easiest defence against undesirables on social networks would be to leverage traditional methods of parenting; that is, a parent with a greater degree of information literacy teaches the child how to avoid online predators. This is certainly the case in teaching children how to stay safe in everyday, offline activities regardless of age; unfortunately, the irony inherent in the educational situation is that it is the child that possesses more knowledge of technology than the parent. Left with no other option, parents simply use the irrational weapon of last resort: censorship.

After all, censorship is the easiest option for an ignorant authority to take: the authority simply attempts to disallow access to the information sphere. To those unfamiliar with social networks, the benefits of such networks are negligible (they’re social without the network) and post too much of a risk to be worthwhile anyway (although the horrors highlighted by the media are statistical anomalies.) Censorship of the system is a natural exercise of the information illiterate.

Teaching the old dogs new tricks

Obviously, some impediment must exist to cause such a failure in the system, such as the example described above. It is a failure that cannot be solved by interface design of technological progress; instead, improving the equality of information literacy between generations requires some vector for the re-education of the older generation.

Generally, we see a myriad of excuses for the education of older generations: “I don’t have time,” “It’s too confusing,” “It’s not worth it,” et cetera, ad nauseum. All of these excuses, however, really exist as euphemisms for the last: generally, becoming more information literate requires too much effort, thus making the cost of education outweigh any perceived benefits, regardless of what the actual outcome may be. In the case of the MySpace example, this is why censorship generally wins: parents do not see any perceived benefit in educating themselves to the required degree of information literacy, as it seems too specialised and costly when the ultimatum is much easier. (Of course, to those that already possess the required skills, such dictatorial decisions seem awfully narrow-minded, as the skills necessary to understand MySpace largely extrapolate to other social media.)

It’s also possible that parents are apprehensive to learning such technology (that their children are so literate with) due to the fact that it challenges traditional authority structures within families, although this is highly speculative. With information literacy, we witness the reverse education of more than mere frivolities such as teenage trends or high school stereotypes; instead, the skills with information technology that many children possess are skills that will be beneficial to them throughout their lifetime, be it the honed ability to detect phishing attempts or the capability of using Web 2.0-style tools to their fullest extent. In a world increasingly dependent upon the Internet, these skills give younger generations supplementary social and professional skills.

These “street smarts,” tailored to a virtual world, are skills generally taught to children by their parents; what kind of inverted structure and authority figures exist in such a world? Parenting becomes much less of a unidirectional experience in the electronic domain, and such a challenge to existing authority may also play a part in retarding the intellectual growth of a parent’s information literacy.

Regardless of the roadblocks, impairments, and other problems preventing an information equity between age ranges, the sheer disparity itself between those with these skill sets is a problem that we should be working to solve. If censorship is the primary reaction to the disparity, something must be done to increase the educational awareness of parents within the online social sphere.

Economically, we somehow must force this education, no matter how minimal, onto the older, less-connected generation. To do so, we have two choices: we must either bring the cost of learning down, or the value of this knowledge up, so that educating parents on information is a better option than censorship.

Obviously, bringing costs down seems nearly impossible. It takes only a few sentences to disallow access to the information (for the most part, anyway,) while learning requires more time than that on even the most simplistic scale. Because of this, we somehow must raise the value — or at least make what value currently exist more valuable — to hope that some can be enticed into becoming more information literate.

In the MySpace example presented earlier, very few people in the current Baby Boomer generation (or, even in the very beginning of Generation X,) will find little value in the MySpace userbase and its associated content. This does not mean, however, that the format is intrinsically flawed; after my own mother heard of what social networks were good for, she has been constantly pushing me to develop a social network that will allow her to connect to other parents to talk about issues related to having children in college.

Such interest may be nonexistent in many cases, though, and the value in using tools online may have to be directly monetary. Without the advent of corporate e-mail and PC use, the information literacy of the workforce would be decidedly smaller. As worked begin to use Web 2.0-style services in the workplace, such as professional networking tool LinkedIn and Internet-based wiki software to manage corporate knowledge, the information literacy of parents (due to the use of such technologies in the workplace) will improve. As business leaders, developers, or even entry-level employees, recommending systems such as wikis to those that can implement them not only helps corporate profitability but improves the community socially as well.

There are ways to build value negativity, as well, although such systems of thinking are generally much slower on a time scale and reflect a greater social perspective. One such way to increase the value of adult information literacy is to socially discourage ignorance of it through stigma; then, the value of ignorance decreases in comparison to its alternatives.

Keeping it focused

It’s evident that we have to close this generation gap somehow. As more and more corporations move toward Internet-centric business models, the older generation is left further in the haze of silicon dust. Meanwhile, in a world where the network effects of economics mean more than ever, those ignorant of technology (and blocking their children from accessing it, either actively or passively) don’t just isolate a small set of users; they break the exponential chain of influence on a viral scale. Forget debates about intellectual property, AJAX accessibility, network theory, or billion-dollar social media acquisitions, just for one week: the biggest problem in building the better Internet environment isn’t in the hands of interaction designers; it’s right in front of our eyes and raising tomorrow’s children.