Incomplete understanding of new societal service systems

Daily living requires an ever increasing amount of technologically-oriented information to carry out routine activities effectively. This has left behind rural communities which still rely on old-style information suited to another time. Skills may have been acquired on the surface but without the depth of understanding necessary for their complete application.

Communities which are unable to keep pace with new delivery systems are more and more dependent on outside resources and government programmes, while being unclear as to what it actually means to be part of such programmes. The result is that systems of available credit are mistrusted and remain unused; the prevalence of local diseases may be acknowledged, but health services are not utilized and prevention materials rarely encountered; local advertising may be known as a concept but the results are limited in effect; systems of pest eradication and the means to acquire them remain unclear; and government procedures are seen as too complex to be within the reach of ordinary people. The result of acquiring basic information that should transform everyday life tends in fact to be confusion and a basic misunderstanding of new scientific practices.