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30% of Americans Aren't Ready For the Next Generation of Technology

Posted by Soulskill on from the controlling-potatoes-with-your-brain dept.

sciencehabit writes: "Thanks to a decade of programs geared toward giving people access to the necessary technology, by 2013 some 85% of Americans were surfing the World Wide Web. But how effectively are they using it? A new survey suggests that the digital divide has been replaced by a gap in digital readiness. It found that nearly 30% of Americans either aren't digitally literate or don't trust the Internet. That subgroup tended to be less educated, poorer, and older than the average American."

43 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. We all know that... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    technology is always progress, and never, ever, going backwards in any possible way.

  2. Funny by sootman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because in my circles, it's the smart people who don't trust the Internet.

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
    1. Re:Funny by dougmc · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There's a difference between blindly trusting random crap you find on the Internet and not ever using it at all.

      At least in my circles, the truly smart people fit into neither category. That said, if you must pick one or the other ... the latter is preferable.

      But that's a false dichotomy ... even better is being able and willing to find things on the Internet, but having the wisdom to tell what's crap and what might be crap (and therefore needs to be confirmed) and what's probably accurate (but keep in mind, it still might not be.)

    2. Re:Funny by Karmashock · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Depends on what you mean by trust... if you mean you think you should encrypt sensitive information and observe security precautions when dealing with money, personal information, etc... then that's just prudent.

      However, there are some that don't trust the internet as a medium in and of itself. And I would argue that that is a problem.

      --
      I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
    3. Re:Funny by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It reminds me of a quote from The Godfather II:

      Frank Pentangeli: Your father did business with Hyman Roth, he respected Hyman Roth... but he never *trusted* Hyman Roth!

      . . . just replace Hyman Roth with The Internet . . .

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    4. Re:Funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not just about information you find. It's also about the technology itself.

      Computers these days come with browser that have default-enabled Javascript, Flash, Silverlight, Unity[1], Java, and who-knows-what-else. You can get 0wned just by clicking on a link, even an advertisement on an otherwise legitimate site.

      Some people are fluent in computers, and trust them. Other people are wary because they don't understand comptuers. But, experts are wary because they do understand computers.

      [1]Unity Web Player didn't exist back when I switched from Windows to Linux, so actually I don't know how prominent it is today.

    5. Re:Funny by vandelais · · Score: 3, Funny

      You must be new here.

      --
      Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
    6. Re:Funny by Charliemopps · · Score: 2

      Because in my circles, it's the smart people who don't trust the Internet.

      I bet you read that on the internet.

    7. Re:Funny by funwithBSD · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It is more like a U shape, with Distrust on the vertical and Knowledge on the horizontal axis.

      One end does not trust the internet because they don't know what is out there,

      the other end does not trust the internet because they know what is out there.

      Those in the middle are just knowledgeable enough to be dangerous.

      --
      Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
    8. Re:Funny by hackus · · Score: 2

      I would like to add that the people who I will describe as the old guard, who brought up the internet have a generally different point of view on the topic of advanced technology. For example, none of us use social networking, either for professional contacts, customers or even general communication.

      Ideas like Facebook, and LinkedIn are something akin to nosey email. Further more we in the old guard as it were see it for what it really is, just a way to sell your information and ripping you off, for really not so good reasons.

      Now if I could charge everyone too look at my kitty pictures on Facebook, along with my personal information, that would be different! Hell I would even give zuckerberg, NSA and god knows who else a cut.

      But they do not even do that. So why even bother.

      --
      Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
    9. Re:Funny by freeze128 · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's getting harder and harder to even RESPECT the internet....

    10. Re:Funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      This is why I laugh so hard at the guy at work, who refuses to write procedures or tools to do critical tasks. "Just look it up on Google" is his answer to everything.

      It's most fun when he looks up the answer on Google, claims he has it, and I explain that he doesn't have it. He argues, and I make him scroll down to who actually *wrote* the top answer that Google provides, and show him where he misread what I wrote there.

      This.... just makes my day when it happens. It happens less often now, he's learned to check the attributions and to take my claims more seriously. But it's awfully fun.

    11. Re:Funny by CODiNE · · Score: 2

      Guess they're not prepared to buy the next thing the internet tells them to. For shame.

      --
      Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
    12. Re:Funny by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

      having the wisdom to tell what's crap and what might be crap

      Reminds me of an article I read about seagulls, both parent birds spend up to two years teaching their offspring what they can and can't eat at the local tip. Despite their efforts a significant number still die trying to eat plastic bags, batteries, bottle tops, etc.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    13. Re:Funny by Oligonicella · · Score: 3, Insightful

      More fun, reading AC comments claiming to be authorities.

    14. Re:Funny by argStyopa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My kids' school, they ban using Wiki for research.

      (Personally, I'd think that a perfect jumping-off point for teaching the difference between primary and secondary sources, critical reading, and source evaluation. But hey, what do I know, I'm not a teacher.)

      --
      -Styopa
    15. Re:Funny by Jeremi · · Score: 2

      However, there are some that don't trust the internet as a medium in and of itself. And I would argue that that is a problem.

      A problem for whom? If they don't mind the inconvenience of never using the Internet, that's their decision, and living without using the Internet is no less doable now than it was for the previous 5,000 generations.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    16. Re:Funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > living without using the Internet is no less doable now than it was for the previous 5,000 generations.

      That is untrue. The internet has either killed off or made formerly standard things much more difficult.
      For example, classified ads are a wasteland because of the internet.
      Computer Shopper magazine is dead and gone, replaced by the internet.
      You can't buy a print edition of the encyclopedia britannica anymore.
      Book stores are much harder to find.
      Music stores are much harder to find.

    17. Re:Funny by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My kids' school, they ban using Wiki for research.

      (Personally, I'd think that a perfect jumping-off point for teaching the difference between primary and secondary sources, critical reading, and source evaluation. But hey, what do I know, I'm not a teacher.)

      Uh, they probably ban it because it's a secondary source. You are fine at using it for a jumping off point, but that's all you can use it for - to jump off.

      You're not using wikipedia for research, you're using it for the background in order to do research.

      And it also means you don't copy and paste Wikipedia and hand it in )adding plagiarism to the all sorts of badness).

      Because you know kids would. Banning it probably is easier to describe to them, but any smart kid would just use it anyways and hide the fact that they used it by going to the original sources. *gasp* Research!

      It's the same as it was back in the old days where we were banned from using the encyclopedias. No one said we couldn't do it on our own time and then use the references in our final work...

    18. Re:Funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What's hilarious about this to me is that I have yet to attend a educational institution that has access to a REAL selection of primary sources. If you were to try to check the works cited on a wikipedia article as a member of the general public and not as an ivory tower acedemic then you would encounter countless confounding paywall obstacles, and probably eventually end up on #icanhazpdf, or putting ~$400 in .pdfs on mommy and daddy's credit card. Total time reading that $400 worth of Adobe Acrobat? ~45 minutes to find a single primary source worth a damn

      -The local libraries have shit for academic journal selections.
      -I've attended 3 Community Colleges, 2 High Schools, & 1 Middle school. Not a single one of them even had a JSTOR account.
      -Ebscohost was the best available on any of them, and it is virtually worthless for finding any of the credible publications you actually encounter in the real world cited by real scientists.

      As far as I can tell, Ebscohost is only good for liberal arts bullshit where you need an editorial from a blogger at reuters to cite for your WR121 persuasive essay on legalizing midget bowling. You want to read about actual science you found behind a paywall with a google search? Tough shit, get ready to drop $40 at IEEE only to discover the abstract overstated their conclusions and the full text does little to no good to provide the information you're looking for. Here's a fun challenge: try to find a phase diagram for N-Pentadecane (C15 H32 / CAS #: 629-62-9) at your local public library/community college. Good fucking luck! I had to tread pavement to the nearest 4 year research university and wander in to their chemistry reference section to find a dead-trees book because I needed a student ID to get access to their electronic databases.

      This uphill battle is essentially why Aaron Swartz hanged himself. People attributed it to the DoJ but gave the academic journal industry that he was fighting a free pass. My tax dollars pay these PhD's government stipends and NSF grants yet I have to pay some trade society an annual membership due just to read the damn .pdfs? WTF?

    19. Re:Funny by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      > My kids' school, they ban using Wiki for research.

      So? In my day, dead tree encyclopedias were banned for research.

      All you have there is an old rule from the dead tree era applied directly to it's online counterpart.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  3. or don't trust the Internet by darkain · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And those who are extremely educated fall into the "don't trust the Internet" group quite easily. How many security exploits do we need before people stop trusting in various internet services? But not trusting it doesn't mean we stop USING it! We simply alter our actions on the internet.

    1. Re:or don't trust the Internet by Tehrasha · · Score: 2

      I don't trust the internet, and I use it 12hrs per day... 20 years of internet have made me the jaded cynic that I am today.

    2. Re:or don't trust the Internet by dublin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Only a fool "trusts the Internet" - especially Wikipedia.

      It's funny, the other day, I was hanging out with a group that included several pretty top-level IT and networking folks, including some leading CS academics. Not one of us uses internet banking, or allows access of any kind to any of our financial accounts over the net. On the rare occasions that companies force the use of the Internet, the general response is to enable access only long enough to do the job, then destroy the Inet access account (best), disable net access (2nd best), or set the password to random gibberish that even we don't know or keep a record of. This forces a long, manual process to "reenable" the acccount that cannot as easily be done by an impostor. None of us "trust" the Internet, I guess.

      That was a real eye-opener for some of the younger "Internet-savvy" group, who all of a sudden realized that maybe they were opening themselves up far more than they realized, especially in a world where every WiFi network, even with WPA2, is now as open as the one at Starbucks...

      --
      "The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last ./ post
    3. Re:or don't trust the Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Not one of us uses internet banking"

      I have sad news for you: your data is exposed whether you use it or you don't. If you've paid attention, all the big bank exploits recently have been through their back-end systems, not through desktop malware or browser exploits. Browsers have become sophisticated enough, especially Chrome, that they're no longer the low-hanging fruit.

      So unless you use a bank that somehow manages two completely different ledger and account systems, one which takes networked transactions and one which doesn't, you're only inconveniencing yourself. You should be far more worried about your server at restaurant copying your credit card number. And _please_ don't tell me that you use your debit card as a credit card. Now _that_ would be stupid, if you're trying to avoid the hassle of recouping stolen funds.

    4. Re:or don't trust the Internet by AudioEfex · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Precisely.

      If you don't pay your bills on the Internet, you are a fool. Why? Because your bills are being paid online anyway, even if you are idiot enough to send a check, which is the most dangerous thing you can do with your financial info.

      You write a check, with all the info needed on it to completely wipe out your checking account (and savings, too, if you have overdraft "protection") on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope that couldn't more clearly scream "THERE IS A CHECK IN HERE" unless you literally wrote that on the outside, and it goes through many hands before getting to its destination which isn't even the company you are paying. If you look at most national account bills (credit cards, cell companies, cable providers, etc.) they all go to the same few places (usually somewhere in the middle of the country like IL) called "lock boxes" where a minimum wage worker opens your envelope, scans your check digitally, transmits the info to the respective banks, and completes the transaction electronically anyway. Oh, and they are supposed to shred it afterwards. You hope.

      The real problem is attacks on back end systems, or assault on terminals, like what happened to Target. Most of the time (almost all) fraud that happens on indivdual online accounts is by someone they know - usually a spouse or child. So if you don't trust them, or can't outwit them with passwords on your system, you have a much larger personal issue than lack of security on the Internet.

    5. Re:or don't trust the Internet by TapeCutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Where were you hanging out, the paranoia ward at the local hospital? - And get off my lawn before I call my luddite attack dogs.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  4. I tepidly disagree... by Slartibartfast · · Score: 2

    Your comment is way funnier the way you put it, but I trust the Internet as a transmission medium -- so long as I'm using solid encryption. Unfortunately, between reports of NSA backdoors in NIST encryption algorithms, and SSL bugs, "solid" has become a somewhat relative term.

    Excuse me. Time to fire up my Tor client over OpenVPN using pufferfish through an SSL tunnel.

    1. Re:I tepidly disagree... by fisted · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I trust the Internet as a transmission medium -- so long as I'm using solid encryption.

      So you do not trust the Internet as a transmission medium.

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
    2. Re:I tepidly disagree... by vux984 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      He trusts the internet will deliver the packets. He doesn't trust that someone else won't try and read them along the way.

    3. Re:I tepidly disagree... by exomondo · · Score: 2

      Yeah when TFA says nearly 30% of Americans either aren't digitally literate or don't trust the Internet I'm pretty sure that's what they meant, not whether it will deliver their packets.

    4. Re:I tepidly disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      > He trusts the internet will deliver the packets.

      With the NSA impersonating facebook's servers, looks like even that minimal level of trust is misplaced.

  5. Wait, wait a second.... by bmo · · Score: 2

    nearly 30% of Americans either aren't digitally literate or don't trust the Internet.

    I have been out here in e-space for decades.

    You are a fool if you trust any kind of technology blindly, especially a technology that gives every moron with free access to a terminal somewhere. This goes for the POTS too.

    Because I'm sure going to trust that guy with the east-Indian accent telling me over the phone to install a remote access tool to my computer. Which actually happened to me 3 something weeks ago.

    You are digitally illiterate if you "trust the Internet."

    --
    BMO

  6. Re:And this surprises... who? by dougmc · · Score: 4, Informative

    Many "grandmas" have embraced the Internet.

    For example, this study from two years ago says that more than half of senior citizens now use it. They often don't know how to use it well, granted, but they're using it. And many of them *do* know how to use it well.

  7. 70% of science writers are... by hurfy · · Score: 2

    I'll let you fill in your own descriptions.

    WTF, How are those two descriptions combined into one group of people to count ?

  8. I'm not digitally ready. by edibobb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not ready to embrace new Windows 8 technology. I'm not ready to manage my finances on an insecure Android phone. I'm not ready to spend uncounted hours ingesting inane trash on social networks (unless there's a member of the opposite sex involved, naturally). I'm not ready to browse a web dominated by animated ads and twisted news. I am a obviously a Luddite.

  9. Who cares? by Nethemas+the+Great · · Score: 2

    The majority of that 30% of Americans will either be dead soon, or from a social-economic background in far greater need of being addressed than their lack of technological savvy.

    --
    Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
  10. Amusing by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 2

    Because In my circles, its the people that understand that trust isn't absolute that are the smart people.

    --
    Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  11. The glass is half full! by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    70% of Americans are ready for the next generation of technology!

  12. Re:And this surprises... who? by SydShamino · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Most senior citizens (those 65 or older) became senior citizens since 1995, when the web started taking off. Many became senior citizens after 2005, when it had mostly saturated middle-class households.

    It's not so much that granny embraced the internet, it's that she embraced the internet and then aged into being "granny".

    --
    It doesn't hurt to be nice.
  13. That statistic can't possibly be valid by Eric+Smith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    nearly 30% of Americans either aren't digitally literate or don't trust the Internet

    For that to be true, over 70% of Americans must be BOTH digitally literate AND trust the Internet, which is impossible since anyone who trusts the Internet is not digitally literate.

  14. Re:On average, average is a crappy metric. by c0d3g33k · · Score: 2

    If you don't know, that isn't necessarily always the case. The average of 1, 1, 1, 2, 10 is 3. In that case, 80% are below average.

    Well yeah, I do know. Because I went to school and stuff. Your pulled-out-of-your-posterior-to-make-some-sort-of-vague-point sample set is 5. The population of the U. S. is currently hovering around 316,165,718. The distribution you posit would suggest that 80% of the population ranks below earthworms. Any idiot knows a sufficiently large sample set is necessary to derive any meaning from the concept of average. Your suggestion is ridiculous. I wonder which side of the line you fall on? :-)

  15. The problem's not finding things on the internet by turning+in+circles · · Score: 2

    I'm more concerned about my searches - looking for things on the internet scares me. What you search for can define what you're thinking about more than what you find. For example, just today I was asked by a website, based on a search I ran, if I had metastatic prostate cancer. Umm, (long pause here because I don't have a prostate) no.

    --
    Might as well face it I'm addicted to data.