Digital Divide

I spent a fair amount of time thinking about digital futures. I have recently been looking at the take up of social media in the organisation where I work. In the early days of social media, people used to talk about 95% of people reading, 5% of people contributing and 0.1% of people originating. However, as social media have matured and found its place in many organisations, I think we need to re-think this. I witness a fair proportion of people who simply don't engage at all. Look at Facebook. How many people do you know who have "no friends", or who signed up once and never went back, or just can;t be bothered? And who never read a blog. Or don't really know what Twitter is. Or Wikipedia. It's not that they don't have the technology - the traditional Digital Divide - it's more that they don't see any need to engage. There's nothing in it for them. Translate that into the workplace and you can quickly see how the 'transformational effects' many commentators say will come from these services may take a little longer to deliver than we think.

But then, isn't that always the case?