Crossing Boundaries: Digital Literacy in Enterprises

Introduction New technologies are often embraced by the young, who can sponge up the capabilities and nuances much as they absorb language, culture, and traditional literacies. An earlier generation of students picked up text editing and email, and subsequently brought their skills and knowledge of uses and effective practices into workplaces. Communication technologies particularly appeal to kids, whose primary focus is on building social networks and learning about the world from their peers—and occasionally from elders, especially those who learn to speak the same language. Cost can be a barrier for the young, but they are motivated to overcome it, sharing systems at schools or libraries, hanging out with more fortunate friends and siblings, and pressuring parents. Mobile phone use progressively reaches younger age groups, even in less prosperous regions. Today, young people lead in the use of text messaging, instant messaging, blogging, and social software in general—MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, and so on. In doing so, they acquire facility with features of these technologies, understanding of challenges the technologies can and cannot address, problems that use might engender, and social conventions that govern effective use. As students leave school or university and move into workplaces and other organizations, they carry these skills and knowledge. They can see where these technologies can address problems or improve efficiency. However, most of their new colleagues are unfamiliar with the technologies and skeptical of proposed uses. The older generation has social networks in place, is less focused on informal communication, so will more slowly try new technologies and learn new tricks. So the spread of digital literacy into enterprises is resisted. It comes slowly. But it comes. In this paper we first illustrate this phenomenon by examining the parallel between the adoption of email and the adoption of messaging twenty years later. We then turn to a third example and our main focus, a case study of blogging in a large high-tech company. Weblogs typify social software empowered by web-based visibility which may move into enterprises more rapidly than previous technologies. Infrastructures are in place, the software is relatively lightweight and inexpensive, and competitive drive for efficiency is stronger in global markets. Email in the 1980s Today, we take email for granted—it is a mission-critical tool for most enterprises in the developed world and increasingly significant across the planet. Twenty years ago, this was not true. In the 1980s, email was regarded with …