👩‍🔧Digital Literacy

Wayfinding: Conclusion > The Other Side of the Argument > Digital Literacy

Finally, digital theatre presumes that more audiences will have access to digital technology and the literacy to use them, as Peter J. Kuo mentioned, but this is a privileged perspective. Carmel Clavin discussed the simple issue of internet access during the first months of the pandemic:

The Internet is a utility like electricity, like plumbing. You are not actually in control of the stream; if somebody shuts off or breaks or overloads the pipes up the street from you, you don't have any control over the water that you get. So that was in the early, especially in the early days of so many people, just the wave of people getting online to do streaming, it really affected quality. . . . I think that people really underestimated the seriousness of considering the Internet as a utility, a shared public utility, and all of the things that come with that.

this concern over internet access and quality:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, another difficulty that performers had faced when attempting to deliver online content was the unreliability, or in some cases complete absence of sufficiently robust domestic internet connections. Often this manifests itself in terms of lag, stuttering or, more seriously, a break in connection mid-performance which can often result in viewers failing to return to not only that, but future performances.

While governments like the Australian Federal Government struggle to offset the cost of living crisis for their citizens – in the 2024 budget, for example, everyone in Australia can receive a $300 energy bill offset – offsetting the cost of the internet or mobile phone data is rarely discussed, so access to high speed internet is both a necessity for postdigital life, and a significant expense for thousands of people. This at a time, as well, when rapid digital technology developments focused on artificial intelligence are straining even more basic utilities – access to electricity all over the world – thus compounding access problems for potential theatre makers and audiences.