23 December 2024 by Mondo2.0

Goodbye expensive reams of paper, now we have the Cloud

I was particularly struck by an article I recently found in “il Post”: In Fabriano, they no longer produce photocopy paper . Who among us hasn’t, at least once, used an A4 ream of Fabriano paper? What news! This is yet another step toward a digital society, devoid of the emotional and sensorial connection to books and paper materials , increasingly less inclined to contact with the object or person.

Numerous social and technological factors have led to this big leap: the spread of smart working has made it increasingly difficult to transport paper documents from home to the office and vice versa, at the same time the spread of shared cloud spaces and digital document management software has allowed for easy document location, search , retrieval , correlation between documents, and “ad personam” sharing .

Furthermore, and this is far from a secondary aspect, a digital document is “portable”, it can be updated and used in any context, even from your smartphone, and it can contain links, hypertexts , which allow the reader to further explore.

Digital 3 Paper 0? Not quite, obviously this digital dynamism has a social cost:

  • the documented difficulty in reading sequentially from a video screen (see my, far from recent, article “ H opping reading by hopping ”), a condition that affects concentration and deep understanding of texts, determining new forms of orienting or superficial reading, especially if one is in front of a small screen.
  • the need for industry experts to renew themselves professionally, find new jobs, Fabriano employees, but not only, are among the many professional categories overwhelmed by a new generation of services and habits of use .

“Pros” and “cons” plus sustainability considerations: apparently, a society that produces less paper is more virtuous, sustainable, and agile, but, to be honest, I’m not entirely clear today on the energy costs of our clouds, our personal computers, and smartphones—always online, always available, and becoming obsolete within a few years of purchase.

Digitalization has made access to information more democratic, allowing a greater number of people to access educational, cultural, and professional resources . However, this change has also accentuated the digital divide , where by digital divide I consider a very broad number of factors, such as:

  • The ability to access electronic devices for information, not everyone can easily connect to the Internet, not everyone has an efficient device, excellent for reading, an e-reader, a large video screen, at home, connected to the PC.
  • The ability to read, at the right times and in the right ways, using a mobile digital device. This second form of the “digital divide” is less obvious but widespread. All internet users are self-taught, a condition that is leading to significant distortions, polarizations, and excessive use.
  • The ability to verify the validity of information and the reliability of its source. This is a challenge primarily due to the amount of information, both true and false, at our disposal, which will only increase in the coming years with the massive generation of content by AI (artificial intelligence).

New, great, enormous opportunities and, at the same time, new forms of social inequality, certainties, contradictions, and above all, many, many fake news.

It is necessary to develop new teaching strategies that effectively integrate the advantages of digital technology with the cognitive and experiential needs of readers. Faced with such widespread change, with electronic devices used for many hours a day by everyone, and the progressive, rapid disappearance of paper, it is urgent to define new digital educational pathways.

One of the priorities in defining new teaching strategies is to recognize that digital learning cannot simply replicate the traditional learning model, banning devices from schools or universities, especially in the absence of paper.

The interactivity and multimedia offered by digital platforms must be exploited to foster attention, curiosity, and engagement. Examples include podcasts, video tutorials, and gaming— non-traditional forms of learning that can, in an interactive and dynamic way, improve comprehension and retention.

It is necessary to raise awareness, explain the principles that allow us to consider a source reliable, highlight the risks in exposing personal images and videos, and anticipate the opportunities, in the short and medium term, due to interaction with conversational agents and AI-generated avatars.

It’s also essential to address the risk of cognitive overload, a common problem in the digital world. The ease with which we access vast amounts of information can be confusing and disorienting.

The overwhelming amount of information we consume online every day, for hours at a time, stimulates a constant, frenetic need for further information, while simultaneously preventing the internet reader from selecting, organizing, and contextualizing the content.

What remains of the hundreds of posts, videos, and web pages I read today?

A new generation of cyberreaders must develop a key skill: the ability to discern useful information in a sea of ​​data. All of this within a new spatial and temporal dimension.

An evolutionary step is needed, I would dare say Darwinian, given that, after several centuries, we are abandoning paper and are gorging ourselves on information for many hours a day, every day.

When I started this blog, way back in 2013, I could never have imagined such a digital world, so very, very 2.0.

Mondoduepuntozero