This problem is exacerbated by the fact that most of the time we evangelists are, ourselves, fairly new to all of this and so are unaware of all the potential implications.

For a start, it never dawned on me that by using Twitter I could find my comments, accompanied by my name and profile information, feeding into a BBC news page; or that by moderating comments on my blog I become legally responsible for their content.

A friend on Twitter today asked if someone could write an article explaining social reporting, and in reply was pointed to a post by Paul Henderson which said:

“social reporters get the offline stuff online, then you can link to it, comment on it, aggregate it, remix it”.

I think that’s a good, brief definition. In the context of this post I would add that if we are encouraging social reporting then we should also be helping people to understand how their published content may be used, and that while that may be exciting it is also mostly out of their control.

A couple of weeks ago Stuart Parker persuaded Jon Hickman and myself to have a conversation on film around the question ‘What is a digital mentor?‘. As a result I suggested to a few friends that maybe (and crudely speaking) a ‘social media consultant’ helps people to use and get the most out of the tools, and a ‘digital mentor’ has a more pastoral role. From their replies I got the impression I may be in a minority regarding this distinction, but one respondent confirmed that I wasn’t alone in my general concerns:

“I’d consider myself very web-literate, but recently I got a potentially libelous comment on one of my blogs that really stumped me. I wrestled with what to do about it for literally days. I am in the lucky position of knowing a couple of excellent web journos … who I felt able to ask for advice.

“In a way, the tech stuff is easier to deal with than the general/etiquette/legal/fuckwittery etc. stuff. We not only need to give people the tools but also the confidence.”

I want to do something practical, but I’m not sure what. Any thoughts welcome!

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In quick summary, the UK government’s Department for Communities & Local Government (CLG) is looking for an organisation to lead on its digital mentor tender. There has been a lot of activity to develop Expressions of Interest, with UK Online Centres being notable for their incredibly open and collaborative approach.

I heard today that out of 41 Expressions of Interest five were chosen: of those five, UK Online Centres (through their Voice Box consortium), Media Trust and National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA) have gone public about being shortlisted.

Anne Faulkner of UK Online Centres has posted a good summary of the discussions so far.

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I want to endorse the idea of ‘digital mentors‘ [link updated], really I do; but the more I think about it the less able I am to do so.

For a start the funding would run out eventually. Any mentoring programme would therefore reach a finite number of people within a very specific time window. Developments in technology will move on regardless.

More importantly though, what point of understanding would mentors be trying to reach with their charges? What aspects of social media would be seen as important? Would their efforts be welcomed, or would some people rather stay digitally divided?

Definitely I agree that education is as least as important as access to technology, but there’s no point in one without the other. And I think that maybe the education is best embedded in the (ever-evolving) formal structures, so that we can develop a culture of understanding and appreciation of the changing nature of technology and the different speeds and levels at which people adapt to it.

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When this happens – and it happens a lot these days – I feel that I’m on an irreversible and rapid ascent to the peak of my sanity, at which point I shall burn-out: not from work but from trying to keep abreast with technology (and currently with today’s hot potato of ‘social media’). I feel like I’m constantly trying to catch-up, desparate not to fall behind. The world is changing incredibly fast; I already feel as though it’s running away and I no longer have the energy to keep up.

It’s inevitable that I (and all of my contemporaries) will eventually become part of the technologically disenfranchised section of society, that we will slip over to the wrong side of the digital divide. Doubtless some of us will fight it off longer than others; but it will happen, as technology develops in ways that we are unable to comprehend within the confines of our experience.

My understanding of the world is already inconcievably different to that of my nieces, whose world has always been inhabited by the internet and mobile phones. My understanding of those technologies was shaped by experience of more than 20 years without them, whereas Vicky and Rebecca are starting from a very different place; consequently they will have a much more profound awareness of technology than I. As with every generation gap, they will have no way of appreciating my understanding of the world and I will have no way of appreciating theirs.

And things are changing more quickly than ever. Life online is much faster than life offline, and that pace is increasing. Yesterday I replied to a tweet (a message via Twitter) ten hours after it was posted because I hadn’t been in front of the internet in that time. I felt I should apologise for the delay, because ten hours is a long time on Twitter.

Although that can happen offline too, it is much easier online to flick back through your messages and catch up with conversations, giving a perspective on the rapid progress of what you’ve missed; while this at least keeps you in the loop, it can also leave you feeling as though you’ll eventually run out of the energy to keep up.

So how do we tackle this problem of a growing digital divide? (And I believe it is growing, and always will: not just access to and understanding of technology, but pace of life, social development and personal education.) Should we be providing people with access to technology? Should we be educating people on how to use it meaningfully? Do we really want offline and online interactions to fuse?

In short, should we be educating to tackle the digital divide or accepting that it’s always going to be there?

The Prime Minister recently pledged £300m to provide internet access to the technologically disadvantaged. There is a ripple of debate around the futility of that, and a suggestion that the money would be better spent on ‘digital mentors‘. Stuart Parker argues: ‘It’s not about the access. The ongoing evolution of the Internet … means that people who are still to use the technology or have limited experience, are being left behind at an unacceptable rate’.

But plenty of people I know want to be left behind. They don’t want to embrace technology completely. They may feel frightened of it, and a little more understanding may even exacerbate that. I may well be one of them. And I suspect the limits of experience and understanding will prevent them (and eventually us, including those charged with the educating) from progressing past a given point.

This isn’t to say that I don’t agree about education being more important than mere access to technology. But I do think we need to think carefully about what that education is. For me it should be as much about understanding how we all live together in a ‘multi-technical’ society as about anything else.

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