Digital Transformation and the Titanic

by Enrico Nardelli

(versione italiana qua)

Reading that title, you will almost certainly have thought: "What on earth do those two have to do with each other?" Give me a few minutes and you'll find out.

By now, I imagine most of you are aware that our country, like many others in Europe, is busy drawing up and launching a raft of projects funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), backed by several tens of billions of euros we are to receive from the European Commission.

I note, en passant, that these eagerly anticipated funds are essentially loans and, as such, will need to be repaid under conditions which, according to some dissenting economists, are on the whole more burdensome for our country than those we could have obtained by going directly to the markets and setting our own priorities. This is not my field, so I will refrain from passing judgment: time will tell who was right.

It is also widely known that two priorities set by the Commission are the green transition and digital transformation. I will focus on the second, given my expertise and experience. I have already shared some reflections on how our PNRR has planned the digital transition process. I now wish to expand on those observations, in the hope of conveying the importance of correcting course on a number of aspects I consider fundamental.

This all-pervasive digital technology — which increasingly mediates so many human relationships — presents itself, as our country navigates the ocean of recovery, like an iceberg (or a borgognone, as Cesare Pavese renders it in his magnificent translation of Moby Dick). We see the part above the surface: the applications that virtually all of us now use every day, as illustrated in the figure below (my adaptation of an idea by Simon Peyton Jones).

Our Ship is trying to navigate around it — but is essentially paying attention only to what is visible above the waterline, focusing on teaching everyone operational skills. This is indispensable, but on its own it is not enough in the long run, not least because the tools in this sector change very rapidly.

Neglecting what lies beneath the surface — the development of computing technology, a task generally carried out by engineers who turn ideas into reality — means we lose control of it. The consequence is that if devices and systems deviate from their intended behaviour, because those who built them see fit to serve their own ends, we are left with no choice but to comply or bear the not insignificant costs of switching to alternatives. We therefore need to train people who know how to design and build these systems according to our own needs, and who can help steer the direction of their development.

Neglecting, furthermore, what underpins everything — namely the widespread knowledge of fundamental concepts, which are far more stable than anything floating on the surface — means that citizens are not fully aware of all the forces at play in the digital society and are unable to participate actively in shaping its evolution. As a consequential, though no less significant, effect, too few students — and even fewer female students — choose to pursue university studies in the scientific and technological fields of computer science.

This is something the United States grasped perfectly, nearly a decade ago. In 2014, President Obama recorded the video urging all American students to learn computer science "to keep America at the forefront." From that moment on, all 50 US states implemented policies aimed at spreading the study of computer science in schools. I would emphasize that the subject introduced was not coding — mere computer programming — but computer science proper, the scientific discipline we call informatica in Italian, which they consider essential to a balanced and fit-for-purpose 21st-century education. For this reason, they placed it on the same footing as more traditional disciplines such as language arts, mathematics, and science. The results are beginning to show. Computer science is now taught in 30% of elementary schools across all US states (a decision that, I should note, falls within each individual state's competence), and the number of girls choosing to sit the AP Computer Science exam at the end of secondary school — a reliable indicator of interest in pursuing the subject at university — has doubled.

Educating people in the scientific culture underpinning digital transformation is a strategic factor for any nation. The vitality and success of a democratic country in an increasingly digital future will depend to a large extent on the level of computing literacy among its citizens. The United States has understood this.

We all know, from the ill-fated story of the Titanic — there it is — how things risk ending for our country if we fail to pay attention to what lies beneath the surface.

I explored these themes in the invited lecture "Citizenship in the Digital State" which I delivered on Tuesday, November 30th at the Politecnico di Torino, at the opening of the 13th conference of the Nexa Center for Internet and Society. You can watch my talk here.

--
The original version (in italian) has been published by "Key4Biz" on 29 November 2021.