Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Digital Divide - A Great Barrier between Old and New

I am observing a great rift between old and new generation due to ignorance and non-accepting attitude of old generation to learn new tools of digital communication. As a result a large pool of experience and knowledge has turned into unreadable old documents to young generation, which is struggling to solve the problems in life with modern tools but no relevant data. Naturally it is bringing out new solutions which have high display value but no strength of effective desired change.

The word 'Retirement' has made emmense damage to growth of society. Though system of retiring person from service was necessary for creating openings for new fresh recruits, the retired persons are thrown out of constructive process and their mindset also changes to spirituality and aloofness and the socity thinks them as worn out and out of date products.

It is necessary to break this barrier by two way approach. Old generation must learn the new digital communication tools and young generation should teach seniors or extract the essence of knowledge and experience by opening new channels of information flow by oral interviews, digitisation of written and printed books and video recordings.

With running 77, when I start teaching computer and discuss about new programming techniques, many professionals and  many senior persons with vast experience and knowledge far better than me treat me as expert and give me respect not due to my age,, but due to their inability to express in new media, .They look at me in disbelief and praise me as if I am a super hero.  

They feel, it is beyond their capacity to learn. However, with my experience I assert that they are wrong. The new digital tools have become so user friendly that even child can learn programming in no time. The main barrier is in psychology of false superiority due to age and feeling shyness in accepting role of student.

I feel, even the health problems aggravate not due to physical aging but due to negative thinking and abundance of brain activity.

There is a need to start coaching classes not for young unemployed youth, but for seniors in various fields who can lead and create employment opportunities by equipping themselves with new tools and techniques.

Dnyandeep Foundation wishes to start movement in this direction. It has decided to form groups of people based on subject or field or field of expertise in every walk of life. Link them to new generation by training them to use digital media like mobile chat or email and build a large database of hidden and nonaccesible knowledge which gets lost with passage of time.

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