But now the pandemic has happened, being online is more important than ever, and there's probably no going back. I find it unacceptable to leave some people behind. I know that pessimism and cynicism about the Internet are fashionable these days. But we're still here, discussing things online. If we're not willing to throw that away ourselves, then maybe we need to give those people more of a chance to decide for themselves if it's worthwhile.

My interest is on what you see as actions related to that. We're a community mostly on the building the web side, bearing at least some responsibility of what "being online" means today.

Your describing them as left behind makes me think you see the current web as the way forward, but I don't know if it's a fair assumption on your position.

Arguably I see their lack of using online tools up to this point as a failure of those tools to provide enough value for the hassle, and the issues would be less to bring this people along than to come up with ways to bridge their world and ours.

We often talk of digital litteracy as if it was an unavoidable skill, but I kind think it's like positing that Amazonia tribes have to learn english. It could be better for them, but we could also have adaptation layers that make it work for them even if they stay in their culture and lifestyle.

Speaking of adaptation layers, my own expertise is in accessibility for blind people. There's some debate in the online blind community about the merits of devices and user interfaces designed specifically for blind people, versus retrofitting a screen reader onto a mainstream GUI. Given the prevalence of proprietary walled gardens, the staggering complexity of even the open web, and the need for blind people to participate in mainstream society, it's inevitable that we have to rely on the latter to some extent. But that doesn't mean that blind people have to live with only the level of accessibility and usability that mainstream platform companies choose to provide, ad least as long as one mainstream platform is open enough to allow for third-party adaptations.

So maybe there's also a need for alternative UIs for people who, for whatever reason, aren't familiar with the conventions of the mainstream Internet, such as email inboxes. It would be important, though, to make sure such attempts at alternative UIs don't come off as condescending (like, say, Microsoft Bob).