Luddite or Illiterate in the Digital Age?

During a reportage about the lawyers’ daily life (in my parallel life I am a photojournalist) I met a lot of colleagues whose age spawned between mid thirties and mid-fifties. During the sessions, many celebrated the fact that I was using a film camera instead of that “modern” digital crap.

Initially this reaction made me think of these people as a Luddites, scared by technology and modernity. And then I realized I was wrong: they’re not Luddites, they just are ignorant (in the Latin meaning of the word: to not know.) Although these people carry on important assignments requiring training, dedication and high-level personal qualities, they’re just powerless toward the digital age because they refuse to understand it.

Of course they’re able to use a computer, surf the Internet and send emails, but that’s all: to them a computer is like a fridge: a tool do perform some task with no particular need of further analysis.

This is why we – as a society – are the loser in the technology evolution race.