An article in The Sunday Times explores the schism between “digital natives”—students who have grown up using an arsenal of high-tech tools—and “digital immigrants”—in other words, everyone else.
Most of the arguments raised in the piece will be familiar to anyone who’s read much about Millennials (The Chronicle, October 7, 2005): The natives, we’re told, are endlessly devoted to their cellphones, adept at multitasking, and possessed of seemingly short attention spans.
But Andy Clark, a former director of cognitive science at Indiana University at Bloomington, provides some food for thought. Digital natives should be regarded as cyborgs, Mr. Clark argues, because their thought processes have become intimately—and irrevocably—tied to the technology they use. “It will soon be harder than ever to tell where the human user stops and the rest of the world begins,” he says. —Brock Read
7 Responses to Decoding ‘Digital Natives’
notquitethereyet - April 19, 2012 at 9:28 am
I think you mean Chad Harbach (not Chad Heap!)
Tenured_Radical - April 19, 2012 at 9:46 am
I do — thanks for that. It’s what I get for blogging in thin air at 6AM.
susanda - April 19, 2012 at 10:45 am
I hope the plane was several miles up in the air….
physioprof - April 19, 2012 at 11:46 am
When I read nasty reviews of successful shitte–whether books, music, restaurants, etc–that blame the fans for being stupid or deluded, my baseline assumption is that the critic is some combination of envious of the success and angry that her “refined tastes” do not dominate the public sphere.
Tenured_Radical - April 19, 2012 at 12:15 pm
Who knows. It’s all magic anyway.
loumac - April 19, 2012 at 2:16 pm
About the honorable mentions for prizes, I partially disagree. Some authors can really benefit from such Spreading of the Love in ways that they couldn’t otherwise. Let’s take a not-entirely-hypothetical mid-career and rather unremarkable but conscientious academic, stuck in a chronic salary-inversion situation in a Flagship State U which is “unable” to give her any kind of raise, unless they think she might be about to leave and that she is prestigious enough to want to retain. Her current Dean is very attached to public and visible signifiers of excellence (i.e. prizes), and not so much to actual proof of hard work (i.e. successful students). Her book didn’t win either of the prizes it was entered for, so she’s clearly not a big cheese (thinks The Dean). But an honorable mention might have gone some way to giving her some symbolic credit, and to starting the mechanisms for a retention offer, even if that’s just some travel funds and a new laptop. Not saying that my book (er, I mean this hypothetical scholar’s book) was excellent enough to get a mention, but if it had, she’d be in a stronger position to argue that the institution to which she’s given 10 years of hard work might want to pay her the same as her newly-hired junior colleagues.
historiann - April 19, 2012 at 5:30 pm
Agree with loumac, as the winner of an “Honourable Mention” for my book from the Canadian and American Historical Associations!
I now serve on a book prize committee, and I made the argument for an honorable mention this year for a beautifully produced transcription and translation of a primary source, including the reproduction of the many images in said primary source, PLUS a really informative introductory essay. The book is enormous and was probably quite expensive to produce, so my thinking was that we should encourage university presses and scholars to do things like this that make previously unknown sources available to other scholars. But to no avail. Harumph!