Observación de la brecha tecnológica generacional desde el prisma de la disponibilidad léxica

Abstract

New technologies have caused changes in the educational, economic and social system. This circumstance has favoured the appearance of substantial differences with regards to the possibilities of access to education, leisure, culture and services of individuals, institutions and countries. Therefore, the digital divide, defined as the inequality generated by the lack of access to the network and the tools it offers (Cabero Almenara, 2014), derives in exclusion, to a greater or lesser extent, from the knowledge society. Indeed, the vocabulary individuals possess according to their possibilities to access new technologies, is, certainly, one of the aspects which reflect this gap. The main aim of this article is to observe the possible existence of a technological generation gap, based on the study of the available lists of lexicon in relation to eight centres of interest, directly or indirectly related to Information and Knowledge Technologies (ICT), as well as to a sociological questionnaire. On the hand one, pre-university students and, on the other, students of a permanent adult education centre located in Málaga, form the sample of this study. This way, we seek to gather and analyse the available lexicon related to new technologies of the considered population. The correlation between lexical and sociological variables will offer relevant information about associations and conditioning factors in both directions. It is based on the hypothesis that older generations are acquainted with fewer vocabulary referred to new technologies. In addition, this lexicon covers a very general and superficial range of technological applications. Moreover, young people with pre-university secondary education studies possess not only more lexicon but, surely, more specialized and specific. The results show a great disparity between the compiled vocabulary from groups of young people and adults. Our final aim regarding this study, is to contribute to the creation of an action plan that alleviate adverse effects of the technology generation gap on those groups that are vulnerable from a social point of view.