Digital Exclusion and Lifelong Learning

The use of new information and communication technologies as an extension of human intelligence is causing social inequalities to worsen, insofar as the most disadvantaged social classes will be increasingly disadvantaged from a cognitive point of view compared to the more favored social classes, because they don’t have the financial resources to use and take advantage of new technologies. The fight against digital exclusion is becoming increasingly necessary. We are living in the information age, and anyone who doesn’t know how to work a computer is considered technologically illiterate. Therefore, anyone who doesn’t know how to enter, process data, interpret, transmit information and search for knowledge on the internet will be marginalized from a cognitive point of view – which will lead to social, economic and financial difficulties. Computers are increasingly at the center of economic activity. As such, it is essential to adopt the necessary measures for the technological literacy of the population. This literacy will aim to offer the population the possibility of living in a technologically globalized society, so that they can take advantage of the knowledge processed by the main sources of information and communication. Disregard for the digital divide can maintain or aggravate a country’s economic and cultural underdevelopment, caused by a lack of technological skills among the population; progressive growth in unemployment, the spread of ignorance; rising levels of poverty; a lack of access to communication and, consequently, to learning, research, socialization, integration into society, intellectual development and the evolution of the human being as a thinking being.