New digital economies, globalization of information and knowledge, technological infrastructures (emerging computer and internet revolution) that impose transformation of business models for value creation, suggest challenges in education for innovation, sustainability, and open knowledge, demanding the mastery and development of 21st-century competencies for problem-solving in context, with capacities and skills. As well as new workforce dynamics, disruptive jobs, management of legal aspects (intellectual property), and operations resolved through services and/or “digital transactions” increased in number and intensity, serving users as employees, organizations, government, and digital citizens in general. Such a response does not ensure the integration and social appropriation of ICT, generating a distance, divide, and digital gap (DG), exacerbated in the race for transition on the way to digital transformation (DxTx).
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The Fourth Industrial Revolution [I4.0] proposed a framework for all domains of society from autonomic computing elements (monitoring, analysis, planning, prediction) collecting information in real time (IBM, 2006). Internet of Everything [IoE] (Bradley, Barbier y Handler; CISCO, 2013), Cyber Physical Systems [CPS] people, data, platforms, processes, based on connected Environment [CE], merging the real and virtual worlds (Lee, Bagheri y Kao, 2015) towards Smart Systems [SS], integrated intelligent devices, platforms, architectures, techno-functional models (Moreno, 2016) in a man-machine relationship that assumes to the former, new competences. Students, citizens, customers in contexts of development and digital transformation [DxTx] (Schwab, 2016). Processes of information exchange “digital transactions” (Cozniuc y Petrisor, 2018) in economies and employment markets, millions of workers are experiencing changes that have profoundly transformed their lives inside and outside of work, as well as their well-being and productivity in relation to what digital services offer and what they deliver (World Bank, 2020, International Monetary Fund, 2020b), deepening that divide (distance) [DG] (Abascal et al., 2016; Longoria et al., 2022).
Digital impact in all scenarios Education, Government, Industry and from there immersed employees, skills, citizens, students (Reisdorf & Rhinesmith, 2020) imposing the question for digital inclusion [DxIx] and its fundamental and transcendent role as it implies an adequate transition, a relevant adaptation in different scenarios of relationship towards/with digital mediations or Information and Communications Technologies [ICT] and its social appropriation (Alvarado et al., 2023). Transition to Industry 4.0 and its applications in organizations and in the different actors of society provided with DxTx understanding connectivity, technological observance and innovation, computer and cyber security, data intelligence, computational autonomy. These elements, foundation for the development of new skills for the development of technological competence and its appropriation (Deloitte, 2019; Kraus, et al., 2019; World Economic Forum, 2020).