The growth of digital has changed habits and behaviors day after day also in the world of work: every day we hear about disruptive business models, platforms for corporate collaboration, the growing importance of Big Data, the use of Enterprise Social Networks, increasingly flexible physical spaces to better respond to a “smarter” way of working, and now we have the opportunity to be able to go to the Metaverse to be able to collaborate, study, be trained, hold meetings,…. . This process of change has entered our everyday lives with enormous speed, so much so that we go in the blink of an eye from enthusiasm for the positive aspects of the ongoing transformation to awareness of the impact of its risks. There is now a strong need to spread knowledge and awareness among people and in companies about the use of tools and the renewal of the activities in which they are employed, respecting others and themselves.
What it means to “inhabit” new physical and virtual spaces. How should we move between novelty, prejudices and little knowledge / awareness? What is the limit of your online behaviors and in new workspaces? We need to rethink a renewed civic education in the light of digital.
Many are asking questions like these and when it comes to work the situation is really delicate. In the 90s there was a lot of talk about netiquette (network + étiquette). By now everyone, or almost, writes on social networks, uses digital collaboration tools, works in increasingly informal sharing spaces and outside the traditional walls of the office, and this could make us perceive the discourse of netiquette past fashion. The truth at present, however, seems to be different and, instead of being an outdated theme, that of informal rules for a correct use of the network seems to re-emerge now with greater vigor even if in a different form. In this scenario, characterized by constantly evolving tools and activities that change by bending the categories of time, space and intermediation, it is difficult to think of rigid and standardized rules. It is almost impossible to think that rules established from above and imposed, once and for all, can be willingly accepted to regulate the many aspects involved in the transformation taking place without them having been reasoned and shared in advance with those who should then put them into practice in everyday life. We live flexibly working hours and workstations: people work anywhere and nowhere specifically surfing between physical spaces and digital environments; For most of the time they do it on the move, with smartphones and tablets, and now it will be more through viewers in a hybrid world and immense the universe, making it increasingly complex to distinguish the time in which we work from that in which we do not work. But do we really know how to communicate effectively and how to collaborate at a distance? How can you talk on video or call? The main question, however, around which all the other questions revolve is: how can we live in this physical and digital ecosystem and, at the same time, look at it in a detached way to identify the most correct ways to take advantage of the tools at our disposal, without “barbarizing” ourselves as people? Sometimes we learn from mistakes and, after seeing words used online as if they were clubs and after participating in call conferences in which we cannot even understand who is speaking, the need to identify and share codes of behavior for relationships, coexistence and work becomes increasingly clear. The most effective response to this need seems to be the promotion and support of participatory and shared forms of policy that we like to think of as a new Galateo, “or customs” of our days. Becoming smarter, after all, means taking responsibility for acting correctly and politely within a framework of shared guidelines for living in physical, digital, and virtual spaces. We need it very much.
The metaverse is a unique opportunity to be able to remedy what did not work with web 2.0 and make this new world a place of education and humanity, thanks to a 3.0 Galateo.
