technology
People “have to learn to ask questions again”
Questions in dealing with technology are important
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Are there any reservations? And what is the easiest way to learn how to use new technologies? A digital expert explains.
Due to the corona pandemic, many people in Germany inevitably had to deal more with the digital world. Pizza is ordered via the app, loved ones can often only be seen via video chat and more and more employees are working from the home office. A study commissioned by the digital association Bitkom, which was published in March, shows that digital technologies helped 83 percent of the 1,002 respondents aged 16 and over in at least one area of their lives during the crisis.
“In the lockdown, most people spent a lot more time in their own four walls,” said Bitkom President Achim Berg in a press release. “In an analog world like the one 50 years ago, the corona pandemic would have demanded a lot more from all of us.” Nevertheless, certain concerns are quite normal, especially for people who are less concerned with technology. In an interview with the news agency spot on news, digital expert and author Holger Volland, whose new book “The future is smart. You too?” (Mosaik Verlag) recently published whether he can understand this fear of contact.
How should the user see through?
“The technological possibilities and the variety of offers overwhelm a lot of people,” says Volland. Not even experts agree on how harmful or useful some digital offerings are. How should a normal user see through? “The rapid development in recent years, for example in artificial intelligence, has” led to a worldwide race. That brought an oversupply of possibilities without corresponding regulations or security systems. Fortunately, this is changing and politics is realizing where technology companies act to the detriment of people in order to increase their own value. ”
However, the expert could “still only advise everyone to deal with digitization, because it has arrived in our everyday lives”. Anyone who overslept this threatens to be left behind. But how do you learn to use new technologies? Volland explains: “We have to learn again to ask questions if we don’t understand something. False inhibitions, because there seem to be so many digitization experts, are completely out of place.” For example, he had “no idea” of what would actually happen to his digital life once he died. “Then I asked around until I understood how to organize my digital estate.” The most important reason for his new book was actually “easy learning”.
Children also have to learn to use technology
Nowadays, parents are faced with the challenge of educating their children in a networked world to use the Internet, social media and the like in a responsible manner. It is often not easy to find the right approach. But how do the kids introduce the topic?
“To answer this question, I met with an expert from Silicon Valley,” says Volland. “Esther Wojcicki is a pedagogue, mother of the CEO of YouTube and mother-in-law of Google co-founder Sergej Brin. In this way, children could learn “that technology is not an end in itself, but a tool”. In particular, many founders from the tech mecca of Silicon Valley would “forbid their children to use social media until they reach puberty”.