Tizio Dei Tizi is a full professor at a prestigious public university in Northern Italy. He is 68 years old and has recently been appointed dean of the faculty. In about 7 years he will retire, but he has already found ways to secure some academic positions even after the age of 75.
He doesn't use the computer, not even for e-mail or to write short letters; and he wouldn't even know how to insert paper into the printer anyway. He never learned, too caught up in much more important and intellectually higher issues than learning certain things from ordinary mortals.
After all, what's the problem? Nobody; so there is the department secretary who lends herself to dictation anything, or even to transcribe entire articles, documents and resolutions written in pen by the professor.
She is the one who has the professor's e-mail passwords and manages every communication on her behalf. This means that every time a message arrives, the secretary prints it and takes it personally to the professor's desk who can read it calmly and then throw it in the big and always full waste paper bin. And if the message requires a certain urgency, then she takes care to call the professor to read the message aloud to him, and obviously she calls him on his cell phone because he can't afford to be in the institute all the time; after all, he also has a professional studio to run… Sometimes he himself gets confused between the studio and the institute, because in the studio there are sometimes doctoral students and post-docs who work on professional consultancy files, while in the institute there are the trainees of the studio who work on the proceedings of the last meeting and layout the drafts of the posters.
But returning to the question of computer use… one wonders: is it still acceptable? The use of the computer at a minimal level (e-mail, navigation and word processing) has been in common use for more than 15 years. So although it is understandable that the elderly have a certain difficulty in approaching new technologies, their conservative and snobbish entrenchment towards technology is not acceptable, which only hides laziness, mental rigidity and reluctance to get their hands dirty.
What makes me wonder, especially in a period of austerity like this, is how much money is wasted to support the activity of this authoritative (???) exponent of the Italian scientific world whom I have here called Tizio Dei Tizi? Hours of work of a secretary who essentially becomes a personal secretary from a department secretary; paper and ink for printing communications that do not need to be printed; calls on private numbers that could be avoided; bad mix between private collaborators and "intellectual workforce" paid instead with research funds (and which therefore should deal with research projects and not with consultancy activities for a professional studio). It's really time to end it.
If we remove the question of the use of doctoral students and research fellows for private purposes (which is actually the most disgusting thing) and remain on the aspect of the only reluctance towards the use of technologies, the same reasoning could be made for the world justice and public administration in general. How many judges and how many managers are in the same conditions? How many resources wasted because of their "ah I don't use the computer"?
Now, the simplistic solution would be the classic "all at home and off to the young" (which doesn't even shock me much). But there could be some intermediate and less socially destabilizing ones.
For example, let's try to impose by law the overcoming of a basic computer suitability TO EVERYONE, even to those on the upper floors (we need to begin to understand and make people understand that in this historical moment nobody is untouchable). Anyone who does not pass it or does not intend to support it, automatically suffers a reasonable reduction in salary. With the sums saved in this way it will be possible to pay for the resources (human and technical) to fill the technological gap of these people.
We can no longer afford to justify or underestimate.
(inspired by a true story. indeed, by too many true stories)
Adapted from: http://aliprandi.blogspot.com/2012/02/la-ritrosia-verso-la-tecnologia-un-vero.html
Not to mention the teachers, many of whom (even young people) have a Facebook profile, but their e-mail "I don't consult it every day".
I remember the competition for the chair in '99, the (very trivial) IT test was worth a measly 0.5 points out of 100! A teacher today could not (nor should) work without a more than good knowledge of technologies. I hope Undersecretary Marco Rossi Doria and Minister Profumo will remember this when the new competitions are (finally) launched.
Perhaps the real name of Tizio de Tizi and all his followers should be made public.
I hate anonymous letters, but sometimes it could be useful to use them.
All those who from the level of "the least that comes to mind" boast of not using cars because they believe that they degrade their nobility of mind, well all of them must (I use the indicative knowingly) be put in the pillory and should be charged for all useless expenses (paper, toner, telephone, secretary, etc).
I launch a campaign of deliberate public denunciation of these "functional retrogrades" especially if they are civil servants.
Who wants to start?
Attilio A. Romita
Absolutely shareable post in the sad realism of the panorama it paints.
However, I would like to offer two food for thought.
Meanwhile, the cultural pressure that Attilio suggests with his provocative style is a much more adequate tool than the solutions sought "by law". You have to change the culture if you want lasting results. Read how those are also easily duped. How many Ill. Cav. Comm. Etc. Lup. Mann. Prof. Tizio de Tizi do you think they would fail those exams? Especially since they would probably have them done by a secretary or an intern and therefore they would also be done well 🙂
Secondly, there is the fact that a person who is no longer exactly in his prime has difficulty acquiring a totally different workflow based on tools that appear completely natural to us, but which are not so intuitive. Are we sure that a valuable person of a certain age doesn't use his time better in another way than learning with difficulty to use e-mail or to respond to friend requests on Facebook?
The 90% of the emails that reach a person of a certain professional importance (and it is assumed that a teacher like Tizio de Tizi should be) is nonsense on which it is better not to waste time.
It is said that the secretary + paper method is no longer productive. It 'obvious that I do not defend in any way those who do not even try because they consider it lese majesty. But I wouldn't even make a bundle of all the grass.
I would like you to re-read the beginning of the post:
“Tizio Dei Tizi is a full professor at a prestigious public university in Northern Italy. He is 68 years old and has recently been appointed dean of the faculty. In about 7 years he will retire, but he has already found ways to secure some academic positions even after the age of 75.”
It is the description that could be suitable for many high public offices and not for a poor old man minus habens hospitalized in a hospice.
We are talking about a person who should have great responsibilities and skills and who, due to a misunderstood cultural supremacy, refuses to use an appliance!
Perhaps once all the surrounding conditions have been correctly redefined, the humanistic and cultural reflections of my friend (I hope so) Paolo Russo acquire a different value ... or not?