Exiling 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 anything they want can either be recorded or be 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 why people would “make up such a crazy idea.” This prompted my grandma to roll her eyes and launch into a long-winded speech about how old she felt, which, in turn, gave me a lot of time to think.
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.
Aside from the “crazy” differences in sayings that my cousin pointed out, a more prominent example of the divide that currently exists between generations is how difficult it is for older people to get the Coronavirus vaccine.
According to an article from ABC News, one of Dr. Rebecca Parish’s 83 year old patients, “called her in tears, unable to navigate the online appointment system at Rite Aid.” Because older people aren’t as well versed in technology, they are having difficulty utilizing it to sign up for a vaccine. If these people are unable to get vaccinated, they are at a higher risk for contracting COVID-19. Put more plainly, these generational differences in technology literacy, can be a matter of life or death.
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. Or, maybe society recognizes that in doing so we are essentially exiling a generation and by utilizing familiar sayings to them like “hang up the phone,” it is our way of keeping them in the loop.
