Generational Myth - ChronicleReview.com
I gakked this link from the always-interesting Geek Studies blog, and both posts resonated quite strongly with me. I have a strong dislike of the term ‘digital native’ that I am slowly learning to articulate.
The first link in particular highlights two ‘trueisms’ of the internet that I think a lot of the more spurious ‘natives’ chatter does not:
1) online inequities tend to map onto offline inequities: if you’re poor, disadvantaged or constrained offline, don’t expect a magic holistic solution online. Certainly there are point-specific contra-indicators: physically disabled people who find physical expression in 3D virtual worlds, for instance. But we do not leave ourselves behind when we log on - if you (or your school) is too poor to be able to buy photo-editing software, you’re going to have less opportunity to experiment and learn this form of expression compared to someone who has daily unfettered access, and so on…
2) Tendency towards invisibility: I’ve blogged about this before, and will do so again, no doubt. But basically, my thesis in this statement is that as the internet becomes more generalized, the codes, structures and architectures that drive it are buried under more and more layers. Vaidhyanathan makes this point when he refers to the coding unsophistication of sites like Facebook. I’m also finding it in my own research on Livejournal, where users note that an inability to dive into the CSS layer limits their ability to control page layout, and thus affects their own identity-formation techniques and perception of their social standing.
So if ‘digital natives’ is off the menu, what term(s) might we use to more accurately describe the varying behaviours of the different online types?
