Excluding Elders
Why do people still say “hang up the phone”? We don’t actually hang up the phone, we just press a button. Or, why do people still say they “taped a show”? People don’t need to use tapes anymore when almost everything they want can either be recorded or made available instantaneously on various streaming services.
My younger cousin, aged 6, asked these very questions. Having never seen a phone that hangs up on the wall, she seemed to be very confused as to why people would “make up such a crazy idea.” This made me think: as a society, are we leaving older generations behind? Is it ethical for us to do so?
Philosopher of Ethics of Information, Luciano Floridi in Ethics After the Information Revolution stated, “The digital divide will become a chasm, generating new forms of discrimination between those who can be denizens of the info sphere and those who cannot.” While Floridi is arguing that this distinction between those who have access to and know how to utilize technology and those who do not is sometime in the future, I believe it is already here today.
Whether it’s having difficulty creating a COVID vaccination appointment because they don’t understand the scheduling website, paying bills online as opposed to sending checks in the mail or accessing on demand content on their televisions, many older people can’t keep up with the technology of today that the rest of the population is so reliant upon.
While I’d like to see the best in society as a whole, I sometimes question if it is ethical for us to be developing technology and information systems as quickly as we are without taking the time to make sure everyone can keep up. The government provides public education for people until the age of 16, maybe they could also provide an educational option for elders to learn how to utilize current technology so that they won’t be left behind?
Or, maybe people just don’t care that in developing technology as quickly as we are, we are essentially exiling a generation. Maybe we still utilize familiar sayings to older people like “hang up the phone,” as our way of recognizing that what we are doing is wrong, and attempting to justify our actions so they don’t feel as left out.
