Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
A New Era
Throughout my childhood I always had a longing to be the owner of a real camera, just like my parents had. I still remember to this day how excited I was on my 10th birthday, because I received that camera I dreamed about for years. To people born before 1980 (digital immigrants), this seems like an outrageous idea, for a 10 year old girl to ask for a new camera before being able to multiply 12 x 12. In this spreading generation of technology it does not seem so outrageous to digital natives that this idea would be in such a young girls head. In the article Born Digital, John Palfrey and Urs Gasser give readers an insight to what our nation has come to by electronic means.
The general public has access to technology everywhere they go. In the post-industrial world citizens would walk miles to find a payphone as well as go to someones house to ask if they were busy or not. Our new world has given us the opportunity to communicate with someone through just the push of a button. People are much different now than they were decades ago, “they meet online before in person, get music online, read blogs rather than newspapers, and half of them don’t know what library cards look like”(p.8). Citizens participating in this move do not know any other way of life than this new, quick and high-speed life. They are what the authors’ call, “Digital Natives”.
Digital Natives were all born after 1980 and these people are surrounding and producing a broader nation for future citizens with the advancements in technology and the ability to operate it. Modern life now gains needed information quicker; business, talking, and email can be done more rapid. Digital natives connect with people all over the world who only know a digital world, because they live their lives online. In writing this book the authors utter the importance of the “digital explosion” and how it is affecting...