After the Buzz

When trying to understand what lies ahead, a good point to start is to find similar situations in the past. When talking about digital natives and digital immigrants, this point is as old as mankind itself.

About digital natives and immigrants

A digital native is a person who was born after 1980, while digital immigrants are the ones born before. The main difference between these two groups lies in their understanding and usage of modern technology.

While digital natives have grown up at a time in which radical changes in information technology affected daily life by offering more and more ways to interact, connect and gather information using technologies like the internet, digital immigrants sometimes often have to slowly catch up in terms of understanding and using modern media and technology.

Gaps between technology and society

The more time passed, the larger the gap between these two groups have become. The best example is the way children and young adults are told in school and university (even though the techniques and methods used here are quite more modern sometimes). Sitting in front of a blackboard for many hours, listening to the person at the front talking, writing down (paper based) notes and having no additional ways to research while questions arise (Wikipedia, Google search etc.) isn’t quite state-of-the-art teaching. The school example might be the best way to see one of the major problems that have arisen since the 1980’s:

• Digital natives are bored and impatient with the ones not being able to use modern media as fast, efficient and goal-oriented, sometimes resulting in an arrogance that might come close to antipathy
• Digital immigrants, especially older generations, tend to be “afraid” of new technologies, don’t want to expose themselves to those who grew up using these new possibilities and therefore tend to keep their old habits alive as long as possible, not wanting to be blamed for not being able to use modern technology in a way their younger colleagues, students or children do. This of course might lead to resignation in the end.

To transfer this situation into a more historical context, one just needs to cross out the word “digital”. Situations of immigrants coming to a country, religion or way of living they are not familiar with have happened ever since.

Referring to more traditional terms, the country in this situation shall be the internet. Digital natives are the ones that grew up in this country, knowing nearly everything about it. The immigrants came in and unlike many times in history, there were no open batlles, no fights about land and rights, but a quiet fight for hierachy in a digital world.

Crossroads

Based on this scenario, there are two directions this relationship can develop to within the next few years:

Broadening the gap

This possibility is the one that shall be avoided at any cost, because it will lead to a separation not only in the digital, but also the real world, caused by an increasing arrogance on the part of the digital natives and  a cumulative neglection causing the immigrants to avoid the ones being arrogant to them leading to a digital and real gap between the two groups, causing private, cultural and business life to separate.

The social way

Todays web is all about being social: Social networks, social bookmarking, social everything. The word “social” itself implies the following:

“Social refers to a characteristic of living organisms (humans in particular, though biologists also apply the term to populations of animals and insects). It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.” (Source: Wikipedia.com)

So its all about interacting with each other. The infrastructure of the modern internet has opened up new ways to connect, interact, share information and do business. The implications this socialization of the internet have led to clearly points out that people do want to share their lives and knowledge, so why not help the ones not being able to use modern forms of communications by now to learn to understand and use them more efficiently?

At the end of this thought, both groups, natives and immigrants lay down their prejudices against each other. Surely it’ll take some time and effort from both sides, but in the end there could be a digitally connected society, integrated and willing to share, interact and exchange.

This post is tagged adaption of technology, digital immigrants, Digital Natives, society