The cost goes beyond simple inefficiency and becomes a mountain of invisible labor, usually absorbed by the most junior person in the room or whoever has the misfortune of being labeled as “good with computers.” It becomes a drag on every collaboration, the friction in every workflow, the meetings that take an extra ten minutes while someone (who is often paid twice the average salary of the other people in the meeting) figures out why they can’t access the shared folder the rest of us have been using for months. It’s the quiet erosion of patience and goodwill among people who are constantly expected to know and fix things that shouldn’t need fixing in the first place.

Imagine a carpenter who couldn’t figure out how to adjust their table saw, or a surgeon who shrugged and said something like, “I’m just not a scalpel person.” We would never accept that. But in the field of knowledge work, “I’m just not a tech person” has become a permanent identity instead of a temporary gap to be filled.

I’m talking about the basics: keyboard shortcuts that save hours per week. Understanding the difference between “reply” and “reply all.” Knowing how to search your own inbox or switch between work and personal accounts. Reading the words on your screen or an error message before throwing your hands up and declaring “something’s broken.” Learning how to unmute yourself or share your screen after years of being forced to do all our meetings on Zoom.

The number of professionals in journalism, media, communications, and academia who still don’t understand how to use the very tools they depend on for their livelihood is, frankly, staggering

I assumed we would all finally reach a baseline level of digital fluency. I could not have been more wrong.

I think we’d see a much more substantive transformation in journalism if we started by simply learning how to use our computers.