It’s not a question of analyzing the skills required by a designer using a computer (musician, graphic designer or writer) but rather a question of identifying the knowledge required when people seek or mediate information :

The next best thing to knowing something,
is knowing where to find it,
Samuel Johnson.

The skills required of informed citizens

  • the ability to find relevant information, and analyze, store and reprint that information ;
  • the ability to write a text, creating a relevant picture or video ;
  • the ability to navigate in cyberspace through a maze of different types of content, accessed via various networks.

Digital Literacy

Since the advent of computers and electronics ago 50 years, the knowledge required to operate different devices has evolved :

This diagram shows that access to knowledge :

  • evolves from a rational pole (computation and programming) to a more intuitive pole (exploration and emotion) ;
  • was initially only used to be very few users (mathematicians, programmers and military), now 23% of the citizens of the planet seek (single user) and after 2020 perhaps 50% (ordinary citizens) ;
  • is accompanied by systems that are becoming more visual, interactive and immersive ;
  • the next environment will likely be 3D : virtual reality, new home automation, smart city, etc. (chapter 4, no 12).

Artificial intelligence (A. I.)

This is the use of systems and tools for copying the human brain:

-800 Automated statues of the Egyptian clergy, Greek, etc.
1280 La Machine logic (Lulle)
1630 The construction of the Gothic cathedrals (complex problem solving)
1642 Pascaline (Descartes)
1738 Automata (Vaucanson, etc.)
1801 Punched cards and loom
1834 Babbage Analytical Machine
1900 major construction projects (complex problem solving) : the Great Eastern, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Panama Canal
1940 Cyber current
1942 Decode Nazi Enigma by Colossus (Turing)
1950 Issue of Turing
1956 Conference at Dartmouth College
1960 Singularity (Kurzweill)
1960 The ELIZA program (Weizenbaum)
1961 First industrial robots
1967 Turtles and the Logo language (Papert)
1969 Perceptron (Minsky)
1969 Apollo 11, the first moon landing (complex problem solving)
1970 Commercialization of the first video games

1970 Period I (Process Control)
1980 Period II (Decision Support)
1990 Period III (Data Mining)
2000 Period IV (Strategic Analysis, espionage)

1996 The supercomputer Deep Blue (IBM)
2000 Third-generation robots
2005 Affective computing (Rosaline Picard)
2007 Apple smartphone
2011 Watson supercomputer (IBM)
2015 US and European projects BRAIN
2018 Convergence of neotechnologies
2020 Quantum programming

It’s not a question of analyzing the skills required by a designer using a computer (musician, graphic designer or writer) but rather a question of identifying the knowledge required when people seek or mediate information :

The next best thing to knowing something,
is knowing where to find it,
Samuel Johnson.

The skills required of informed citizens

  • the ability to find relevant information, and analyze, store and reprint that information ;
  • the ability to write a text, creating a relevant picture or video ;
  • the ability to navigate in cyberspace through a maze of different types of content, accessed via various networks.

Digital Literacy

Since the advent of computers and electronics ago 50 years, the knowledge required to operate different devices has evolved :

This diagram shows that access to knowledge :

  • evolves from a rational pole (computation and programming) to a more intuitive pole (exploration and emotion) ;
  • was initially only used to be very few users (mathematicians, programmers and military), now 23% of the citizens of the planet seek (single user) and after 2020 perhaps 50% (ordinary citizens) ;
  • is accompanied by systems that are becoming more visual, interactive and immersive ;
  • the next environment will likely be 3D : virtual reality, new home automation, smart city, etc. (chapter 4, no 12).

Artificial intelligence (A. I.)

This is the use of systems and tools for copying the human brain:

-800 Automated statues of the Egyptian clergy, Greek, etc.
1280 La Machine logic (Lulle)
1630 The construction of the Gothic cathedrals (complex problem solving)
1642 Pascaline (Descartes)
1738 Automata (Vaucanson, etc.)
1801 Punched cards and loom
1834 Babbage Analytical Machine
1900 major construction projects (complex problem solving) : the Great Eastern, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Panama Canal
1940 Cyber current
1942 Decode Nazi Enigma by Colossus (Turing)
1950 Issue of Turing
1956 Conference at Dartmouth College
1960 Singularity (Kurzweill)
1960 The ELIZA program (Weizenbaum)
1961 First industrial robots
1967 Turtles and the Logo language (Papert)
1969 Perceptron (Minsky)
1969 Apollo 11, the first moon landing (complex problem solving)
1970 Commercialization of the first video games

1970 Period I (Process Control)
1980 Period II (Decision Support)
1990 Period III (Data Mining)
2000 Period IV (Strategic Analysis, espionage)

1996 The supercomputer Deep Blue (IBM)
2000 Third-generation robots
2005 Affective computing (Rosaline Picard)
2007 Apple smartphone
2011 Watson supercomputer (IBM)
2015 US and European projects BRAIN
2018 Convergence of neotechnologies
2020 Quantum programming