In a hallway conversation this morning, I got talking with a few of the people in the office about how – if at all – the basic technology literacy of those in their personal and professional circles had improved over the last few years. The answer – no. It seems that people are still struggling with the basics. This is a good thing for job security, but a bad thing when it comes to moving beyond basics and using new tools. Granted the latest and greatest tool won’t do much for those who can’t use it, but at the same time, those who can may be able to do great things. But this will create yet another digital divide as things that seem simple to those reading this are doing things that are actually quite complex to those who are unlikely to read this.
An interesting case in point on this is what I was reading today about the Blackberry in the US and Canada. It seems that the email service may be disrupted by a court in Virginia tomorrow, but that action won’t have any repercussions in Canada, unless you are travelling across the border. From The Star:
But Ken Dulaney, a technology analyst with California-based research firm Gartner Group, said the upgrade process isn’t foolproof. First, RIM will have to upgrade its network to change the way BlackBerry messages coming from or going to the United States are stored. Then, all organizations using RIM’s BlackBerry enterprise server software will have to make the upgrades on internal computer systems.
“We estimate, if some organization owns 500 BlackBerry devices, it will take them about a month to upgrade their firmware,” said Dulaney.
The final step is to download a “patch” to all BlackBerry devices. Rogers and other carriers say individual BlackBerry users will be able to do this themselves, but Dulaney said this underestimates the ability of some people to mess up seemingly simple computer tasks.
“Most of these people are executives who aren’t really good at computers, and you wouldn’t want them to upgrade firmware,” said Dulaney, pointing out that making a mistake could corrupt the device.
“Most companies will likely opt to get these back centrally and have them professionally upgraded. For a large, large company such as the Royal Bank of Canada, it could take them a couple of months to get up to snuff.”
On another note, it seems that I’m getting closer to getting my syncing back on track between my phone and computers. Though I’ll have to wait and see how it pans out as one computer is in the office and the other is at home and walking between them is a ten minute exercise if I were to want to do it in such a manner as to get it done in one day. Though I’m almost ready to “Reset all devices”. If someone has any thoughts as to why a Nokia 6620 can’t sync with more than one Mac, please let me know and also, why it will send files to one computer and not to another with identical BT software – but different firmware (1.526 seems to be giving headaches when 1.2 and 3.X is not).
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