Social media outlets available now provide a context for people to connect, to collaborate on initiatives and to create new content. People can create and communicate information relating to commerce, religion, political ideas, cultural identity, geographical events, climate, conflict and many other topics. Online users can access information easily about all of these things almost as soon as they are published.
The problem with this is that disinformation and fake news can be created, published, read and believed just as easily. As the world becomes more closely connected, the number of groups seeking to establish and reinforce their identity also increases as people seek to ensure some stability in their lives in the face of rapid change. Leaders in these groups will become more influential, and belief in what they state becomes more accepted as truth. Those with a stronger intensity of faith or belief will be less likely to change or challenge views. As a result, social media platforms are an emerging tool for creating divisiveness, and spreading disinformation and increasing conflict- in fact, they have huge potential for propaganda.
There is a belief that as people become connected through digital means, they will be able to access the information they need, at the time they need it, so librarians in particular are seen as unnecessary. Their role, when described as as gatekeepers of knowledge, is viewed as limiting and anachronistic. A true gatekeeper knows which gate to open to help information seekers - As Neil Gaiman remarked,” Google can bring you 100,000 answers to a question, but a librarian can give you the right one.”
Students know how to access information - just ask Google. What students do not do intuitively is look past the first five results out of three million possibilities. They may not recognise that the suffixes on the urls will provide some information about the provenance, bias and accuracy of the information provided. Students may not realise or acknowledge that Google has chosen which items of information to show first - based on metadata, previous searches and so on.
A strong culture of literacy needs to be developed in schools - data literacy, digital literacy, information seeking and evaluating literacy for starters. Librarians and teachers have the responsibility of developing this culture, and of providing resources to develop and strengthen such cultures
Access to digital technology is another variable that may be affected by population trends. One trend is that more people will live in cities, but there is no indication of what form these cities may take. If they continue to spread, will there be less rural land available? If they are concentrated in smaller areas, how will these be imagined and constructed? Access to digital technologies is already less in poorer areas, and rural areas regularly have less access to the services that run these technologies. Power supply, or telephone access may continue to be less available in rural areas, If dependence on access becomes prevalent, there will develop a strong need to find smaller, less centralised and cable-dependent points of access. The printed word may become as important as digital material. Librarians and libraries will become important in providing access to both delivery forms as well as audio and video. Teachers will need to ensure that they somehow walk the tightrope and keep a balance between digital tools and the real world problems of lack of access.
National Intelligence Council. (2017). Global trends: The Paradox of Progress. National Intelligence Council: US. Retrieved from https://www.dni.gov/files/images/globalTrends/documents/GT-Main-Report.pdf
Neil Gaiman quoted in The Guardian 27.6.2018 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/17/the-guardian-view-on-books-for-all-libraries-give-us-power
Trends shaping Education 2016 OECD https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/trends-shaping-education-2016_trends_edu-2016-en#page1
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