Cavemen needed a set of skills to survive, much like today we need digital literacy

Picture this: it's a pre-historic age. The Sun rises over the horizon. It’s peaceful, only the birds chirp in the distance – some are close by. Gorg, a caveman, rolls out of his sleeping spot and readies himself for the day. His glance sweeps across the cave, mentally ticking off each of his family members as he sees them. And that’s when his eyes settle on Frurughz, the young male who has joined his family settlement when a pack of sabre-toothed tigers took out Frurughz’s community. Gorg did not mind his presence. Not only had Frurughz remained an orphan at an early age, he also had wildly different interests and aptitudes than Gorg’s clan. His hunting and tool-shaping skills are just not up to par. What’s worse, he has no grasp of the terminology Gorg and his clan use to ambush and hunt down a mammoth. Or, as Gorg would tell Armundzf, the mother of his children, and others around the table at his cave-folk dinner party, over a mammoth rib and some protozoan-infested water: Frurughz is such an illiterate. For a person to become an active member of society, at any period in history, literacy in a certain number of areas is required. A minimal level is needed to survive in society and higher levels of literacy will result in thriving, not just surviving. Throughout the ages, acquiring skills has been an evolutionary attribute of humanity and the importance and implications for people, society and the economy cannot be understated. Every technological and social step forward has contributed to who we are today. Agriculture, literature, arts, mathematics, engineering, the pyramids, and so much more, tell who we are, over time. I am sure that during the age of hunter-gatherers, minimal literacy was about hunting and gathering. Plus, there will have been elements of shelter-building, clothes-making and culture-forming. All knowledge was imparted experientially by family and clan members, passed down the ages by storytelling. I suspect that diversification of literacy-types will have evolved over the ages, too. Pyramids, temples, colosseums and other ancient super structures remain from a time that was hugely articulate: not everyone had to be a master temple-builder; but everyone had to have some form of literacy for a place in that society. The empires of ancient times had schools for some – mostly the wealthy or of royal descent, like those who became scribes in Mesopotamia – and advanced skills were taught on the job: masonry, shipbuilding, farming and so on. Fast-forward to the year 2000, and 75 per cent of the global population has received some form of elementary schooling, though regional and country variations are significant. Learning has moved from being a specialised on-the-job experience-based endeavour to being an in-class taught undertaking. This latter approach has lifted the level of literacy that we commonly see today: children, adolescents and learners acquire fundamental literacy skills in reading, writing and mathematics. Specialised skills are taught in advanced learning settings as well as through apprenticeships and other means. However, the core skills that everyone needs are taught formally. This poses a conundrum, because the “core” changes over time. Along come Generation Z (1997-2010) and Alpha (post-2010) – and the technologies they are native to, and that we older generations have learnt to use or at least live with. I learnt a few basics on a Sinclair ZX81 with my dad’s computer instructor in the early 1980s. My son learns everything online, without an instructor. And I mean everything. The opportunities are infinitely greater today, as are the risks . The entirety of our lives is online – from memories to bank accounts, to our social lives, our shopping lists and our travel arrangements. It often feels like malicious actors access my content with greater ease than I’m able to myself. This is precisely why digital literacy, while not new, is of paramount and universal importance. This entails understanding the meaning and impact of what we do, should or should not do online and how we protect ourselves and our families . The race against viruses, phishing scams and malware in general is relentless. As private-sector companies invest significant percentages of their revenue to protect themselves, we need to become as literate as we possibly can, even if we are only end-users and not tech-savvy folks with specialist knowledge. While governments have a role in regulating and policing online activity, it is down to each single user to protect themselves. And so, we come full circle: we live in a world in which classroom learning is being re-designed and re-configured, moving online and becoming personalised. Digital literacy is more important than ever today and for the future (as is financial literacy, by the way). Should this be taught alongside maths, reading and writing? Or should this happen indirectly, organically, through both official and dubious sources? I don’t have an answer, but I would dread the day when I am at a dinner party and need to explain to my friends, over beef ribs and kale salad, that I have lost our holiday snaps because I was computer illiterate.