The myth of the “digital native”

Digital Native Map

The myth of the “digital native”

The phrase “digital native” connotes a mastery of and facility with digital tools which most young people lack–they are adept as digital consumers, but that largely implies an extreme susceptibility to the manipulations of advertisers.

Mastery should mean having a depth of understanding and a historical perspective on the thing mastered, and facility should mean having the skills, tools, and motivation to create in the digital landscape. While many youth are thus adept, as a generation the digital consumers need lots of helpful context-framing and coaching from all kinds of immigrants.

The phrase “digital native” connotes a mastery of and facility with digital tools which most young people lack–they are adept as digital consumers, but that largely implies an extreme susceptibility to the manipulations of advertisers.

Mastery should mean having a depth of understanding and an historical perspective on the thing mastered, and facility should mean having the skills, tools, and motivation to create in the digital landscape. While many youth are thus adept, as a generation the digital consumers need lots of helpful context-framing and coaching from all kinds of immigrants.

An unstated assumption of the “digital native” myth is that these kids who grew up with the internet already a part of their lives are somehow internet experts by birth. On the contrary, my experience working with students K-12 is that most do not have much understanding of the internet’s potential and uses, nor the critical and analytical skills to harness its power for their own uses. In terms of the internet, I am the native, present since it was only browsed with the original Netscape Mozilla dragon. I have watched it grow from a fascinating but tiny world of academic and community connections, where almost anyone could become a “friend” and quickly earn deep levels of trust, without ever a face-to-face meeting, into the vast and infinitely complex social web of deceit and chicanery and creativity which it is still becoming.  We all need each other, and all can contribute, and all need help of one kind and another from time to time…

Tag Galaxy

Kevin Feldman’s listserv just alerted me to Tag Galaxy, a site from Germany, was a student’s dissertation…

Woody Guthrie's Tag Galaxy

CommonCare: Medicare for the rest of us

Bill Maher was railing the other night at how bad Democrats are at naming things. “Single Payer” is about the least sexy name for a program ever, whereas “Death Panels” and “Pull the Plug on Granny” conjure immediate, visceral images that everyone understands. I was listening to a BBC program about African development, and someone being interviewed said something about the communal nature of African values, to explain how there is a different work ethic on the continent :
Hence, CommonCare. It’s got the ring of Medicare, the most efficient and successful government program in US history, and it ultimately means what Single Payer ought to be called: Final Payer, meaning, ya’ll go ahead and fuss around with all your complicated insurance plans and whatever, but anyone someone doesn’t get the basics paid for through one of those schemes, it goes to the Final Payer, the “public option” [a close second for least sexy moniker] known as CommonCare.

It can even be bundled as part of immigration reform as a way to extend coverage to the undocumented: they can earn “points” towards status normalization by fulfilling Preventive Care requirements, and save money that otherwise goes to emergency room visits.

Saturn enters the Libra sky on 10/29/09

From astrologer Paul Six(click on Journal to see the original):

As people become selfish and self-centered out of fear that they are losing what they have, Saturn’s two and one-half year passage through the Libra sky restores the principle of fairness in our everyday lives. The purpose of Saturn’s work in this sign of the zodiac is to balance out the polarities, so that all that is disproportionate is adjusted and equilibrium is restored.

When the Saturn principle moves into the Libra sky, an intensified pressure is felt by members of society to participate in life according to the agreed upon rules of the game. Saturn in Libra motivates people to succeed in partnerships and in society in general by playing fair and square, by showing others the respect one would like to receive (the ‘Golden Rule’) and by ending up with lots of love in life.

Saturn enters the Libra sky on October 29, 2009-the eightieth anniversary of the stock market crash of 1929 in the United States, the day when the market lost 14 billion dollars.