I personally loved the article on Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. The author seemed to group everyone in the world into one of these two categories. I'm not so sure about myself, however. I want to say that somehow I grew up in the right place at the right time where I was caught in the middle. For a large portion of my life, there was no internet (it did exist, but nobody knew about it). However, when I was in 8th grade passing over to my Freshman year of high school, the internet was all the rage. With American On-Line, Netscape, and popular websites like "Yahoo," we were all excited to get online and get something called "electronic mail." I remember exactly when this happened, and as I have commented many times before, I grabbed on to this new technology. I learned HTML and was quickly making websites. Soon, email became my normal mode of conversation and correspondence.
From this point in my life onward, I lived in a digital world. In fact if I think very hard back on the fact, I cannot remember a time in my life where the internet wasn't important. Now, part of this has to do with the internet coming of age at precisely the time where I became aware of the world around me. But somehow, I still don't fit in to one of the two "labels" laid out before me. I feel that either I was a young pioneer in the "digitally native age," or one of the last people in the "digital immigrant" age. I think that I am a transitional figure, and there are many like me who lived in my exact time. It's sort of Stravinsky, who when he was born talked about the time in his life where his main form of transportation was the horse and buggy. Then, as an adult, he talked about the invention of the automobile, and how this new technology changed his life forever. By the end of his life, he was flying in planes and even lived to see a man walk on the moon. Now this is an incredible life.
I'm not suggesting that I'm living in a world like Stravinsky's, but I do think that my generation may experience changes just as paramount in different ways. With advances in biology, technology, and in other fields, who's to say what I will experience in my lifetime much less the world my children will one day experience. It is all fascinating, but they will all be digital natives. But we will all be immigrants in some way or another.
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You make a good point, Rick. The article is clear in that the generation of students I've taught for the last several years are, clearly, "digital natives" but technology advances are exponential and they, too, will become "immigrants" of one form or another. Another thought I had as I read this was maybe Gen-X and Gen-Y citizens may not be as out of touch as the article indicates. But I do not feel so far removed from the technology surrounding us nor so firmly implanted in old technology that I cannot relate to the world around me. It is also possible I am missing a point the article is making. But after I finished reading it and reflected on it through the day, I wonder how much technology, at least the brand of technology this article touches on, will I use daily in a band room, rehearsal setting.
ReplyDeleteYou make a interesting comparison to Stravinsky's experiences with the changes to transportation.
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