With each generational wave, our level of expectation from technology and the digital realm continues to rise. Digital has become commonplace, standard, that which is required as a starting point. Today’s digital native uses a very different digital base line to measure life against compared to the digital immigrant.
Has our constant absorption of the digital helped to create an insatiable need to remould ourselves in order to become better at participation in the digital realm itself? The infiltration of mass media into our existing has made us dependent on it questioning how or why we should ever function without.
Consumerism feeds our need to have that sought after device, that accessory that is ‘so now’. Ownership and access to the digital creates exclusivity and a sense of belonging, creating communities and groups . The Future of Communication video outlines one possible route that the digital world could pursue and how that route would impact upon our being.
Digital culture has become part of our being / Our being has become an inseparable part of digital culture.
Good news for the BBC!
An agent avatar is an interesting construct – the implication being that the avatar does things without you.
“experience is the new reality” – Sian & I were at an interaction design event last night and one of the speakers was talking about his app/game being built on the principle of ‘experience’. I think this has particular meaning in this field/space, but it seems like quite an empty concept when used like this. If you think it’s happened, that’s an experience, I guess?
I noticed the mention of the digital native in your accompanying text, Nikki – who is an ‘immigrant’ in digital culture? I’d like to see or hear more about how you’re thinking about this.
I’ve been giving this more thought since reading Bell’s Storying Cyberspace 1. When discussing characteristics of cyberpunks he employs a McCaffrey (1991) quote:
“The cyberpunks were the first generation of artists for whom the technologies of satellite dishes, video and audio players and recorders, computers and video games (both of importance), digital watches and MTV were not exoticisms, but part of a daily ‘reality matrix’. They were also the first generation of writers …who had grown up immersed in technology but also in pop culture, in the values and aesthetics of counterculture associated with drug culture, punk rock, video games…comic books and …gore and splatter SF/horror films”
My understanding of immigrant is the opposite of this model but on a wider scale.
During the past few days I myself have felt a bit like a digital immigrant…Faced with the Technological giant Twitter! – I had never really warmed to it in the past and this was one digital pool I firmly kept my toe out of. I felt peripheral, full of hesitancy…– definitely outside of the native camp. – dare I say it, a “tweejit”!
So for me, the term immigrant refers to those of us who find themselves with their toes clenched away from these digital pools.
I am overcoming my Twitter phobia…one tweet at a time.
oh no, a tweejit!!
hilarious. It may not be much consolation, but I am firmly of the view that being something of a stranger-outsider is extremely useful from time-to-time. It’s the perspective it gives, I guess – not necessarily better being than an insider, but offering something different. In a few weeks when we come to talk about ethnography as a method, we’ll get to consider that more – the balance of participation and observation is a fine one, not easy to achieve.
What this first week has done for me has clarified my experience and I was interested in your use of ‘digital desensitisation’. There is a danger in all of this flurry of discussion and activity around the course that we forget that there are people who are neither digital natives nor immigrants and are also not Luddites, but who are so marginalised in society that this debate has no meaning at all. I work in adult community learning in the outer reaches of South London. Two parts of my job are: elearning manager and ICT Curriculum. In the former role I am passionate about the role and technology can play in opening up worlds and opportunity. However, in my latter role, I am finding that more and more people are coming to us to learn how to ‘get online’ in order to search and apply for jobs ( that generally don’t exist). They are deeply angry and unhappy ( I would even say depressed) about this as they see the pressure to do this as one more layer of the dystopian world they already inhabit. They feel pushed from pillar to post, with one pillar being the Internet. They often have literacy or language barriers and no easy access to computers or even the possibility of that access. I have been used to helping people ‘get online’ before and it was always relatively easy to encourage them to search for interests and to see the advantages of e.g cheaper shopping, more choice etc. This is not the case with those who are digitally marginalised, because they are on the margins anyway. It is a growing group and in bad economic times even more so. This is unlike some experiences of those in poverty in some other parts of the world who are finding expansion through technology. There is no answer, I suppose but just a thought.
@Wendy I think that you make a very important point about how the changed current climate has created a new layer of information searching. That folk are no longer seeking to get online in order to hunt for gardening or cookery tips. For many the act of getting online has lost its luxury status and has taken the form of a necessity – a gateway to other potential necessities, jobs, info on welfare rights etc.The landscape has changes and the actions of the inhabitants also as a result.
Isn’t reality reality? Living your life watching a computer screen isn’t reality, no matter how advanced your computer is. It’s just watching a screen… as compared to watching nature (which was the point of the third film we saw, when the woman walked by a bird while checking her cellphone). Just a thought. Sometimes, you have to stop and smell the roses.
@Bill – I liked this film ‘Thursday’. It threw up a lot of interesting questions about technology and nature, the potential for both harmony and conflict between the two [with humans sandwiched in the middle] I agree that in this world of constant technological immersion it is easy to forget to stop and smell the sweet scent of the roses! In certain cases those roses might be digital!For some people technology offers the opportunity to create a parralel ‘reality’ [sometimes more 'real' than the physical world in which they reside] I’m thinking of virtual worlds such as Second Life.[www.secondlife.com] Just a thought – How do we define ‘real’ – as ‘non-technological’ / ‘non-digital’ or ‘physical’?