Saturday 23 March 2013

Blurring the Line Between Digital Native and Digital Immigrant

The idea of what a digital native truly is can be a heavily debated topic. A native in layman's terms is essentially someone who was the first to own or be a part of a place. So technically in that sense I myself can be considered a digital native. But when looking at various definitions on the internet, they believe that it is someone who has been brought up in this age without any prior knowledge which would therefore make me something known as a digital immigrant as I was born slightly before it and therefore "immigrated" into the world. Would you consider someone who is 40 to be a digital native? Of course not. Will the fact that kids nowadays have not lived in a time without digital technology become a problem in the future? What kind of effects will this have?
 
Take for instance the baby who doesn't know the difference between an iPad and a magazine. Although this may seem like an extreme example as they're only 1 year old, it's interesting to think that when that child gets to be a teenager magazines may not even exist. Something that seems so normal to someone like me would be an archaic piece of history to them in such a short span of time. With technology evolving faster and faster it's almost impossible for us to keep up, and like how someone born 50 years ago is having a hard time adjusting to the technology of today, my generation may have a hard time adjusting in less than half that time. Inventions since the 1950s have been extraordinary and that doesn't even show the incredible advancements we've made since 2004 like how computers have become so dominant in our everyday lives to the point where without them we are lost.
  http://ashleighgraham.edublogs.org/files/2011/01/Digital-Native-10qz4at.jpg
The idea of history repeating itself, as in slowing down our technological progress to a plateau for a while, seems to be highly unlikely at the rate we're currently going. Notions of an AORTA (Always On Real Time Access), a term coined by Mark Anderson make us believe that sooner or later we won't be able to escape this technology and it will always be a present factor in our every day lives. What this means for digital immigrants is constantly trying to keep up with things that are expanding at a pace faster than they can learn. And soon enough, digital natives may even find it difficult themselves despite being surrounded by it since birth. CNN's Oliver Joy writes in his article that there are still many places in the world, like India, which are ever expanding their technological boundaries but plenty of the younger generation would not be considered "digital natives" due to their limited access leading to digital hierarchies.
 
The effect this can have on the world could be seen as a positive as we make our way past these supposed "primitive" technologies of the past, but at what cost? By constantly expanding our technological boundaries we are at once making ourselves better and outcasting ourselves at the same time. One minute you know everything there is to know at the time and suddenly you fall behind. At this rate it looks like the only thing that's going to be able to keep up with this growth are the machines themselves, and I'm not willing to let Skynet take over while I'm still around.

3 comments:

  1. Hey Shayne,

    I enjoyed this post, well done. You talk about, what is to me, a very scary topic. That video of the child who doesn't understand that the magazine isn't a touch screen is completely terrifying to me. But perhaps the fact that I don't know how to work a typewriter is disturbing to someone a few decades older than me? I don't know.

    In your post you mention that you find it unlikely that technological development will plateau any time soon. I see where you're coming from, but if you think about it, aren't there many realms of technology that have done just that? Television and cell phones (especially iPhone), for instance. Sure, they change, but not much. Mostly the added features are there to keep people purchasing. What are your thoughts? Perhaps I am being too narrow sited looking at everyday devices.

    You mention Skynet (Terminators? Artificial intelligence?) at the end of your post. If this is the type of development you are thinking of, then I can only hope for a plateau. Otherwise let me know when you want to devise a plan to fight against the robot apocalypse. Yikes.

    Mike

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  2. Love the Terminator reference. I agree with Mike that maybe its just the evolution of technology that makes magazines obsolete and and in the same way we no longer use typewriters, the future generations will not read magazines.

    Adam

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  3. Thanks for the input Mike, I agree with you that most of our everyday technologies have pretty much reached their peak in terms of advancement, but what I meant was more in terms of the features that are part of them will not plateau. Nowadays most people don't even use their TV's for watching actual television, it's either for games or running in the background. The fact we can watch TV on our phones and laptops too makes me think that soon enough every device will have multimedia features and render any of these previous technologies obsolete. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't really see us plateauing anytime soon in a physical sense until eventually every device can be put into one medium.

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