Last friday Tina and I drove down to San Antonio for Firecat First Friday coworking session, hosted by Susan Price at the fabulous Firecat Studio. During the lively brown bag lunch discussion about social networking, we were discussing Digital Natives (kids who are growing up with the Net) and Digital Immigrants (adults). Like many of the early adopters in the room, I thought “Hmph. I might as well be a native — I’ve been immersed in the Net from the beginning.
Then today on David Pogue’s blog, I read the following joke, taken from the Reader’s Digest site.
Working as a computer instructor for an adult-education program at a community college, I am keenly aware of the gap in computer knowledge between my younger and older students. My observations were confirmed the day a new student walked into our library area and glanced at the encyclopedia volumes stacked on a bookshelf.
“What are all these books?” he asked.
Somewhat surprised, I replied that they were encyclopedias.
“Really?” he said. “Someone printed out the whole thing?”
Now that’s a digital native.
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1 spike // Feb 7, 2008 at 7:14 pm
when henry was little and didn’t know his right from his left, one day i told him, “turn right” and he wanted to know which way that was. i said, right is the hand you use on your mouse. and he’s the one who taught me that you do not point the mouse at a monitor and try to use it like a remote control.
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