A few years ago I came across the term digital native, for someone who has grow up entirely in the age of digital transistors. The cut off date is somewhere around the late 1970’s so somehow I have made it into the digital generation. However comparing the technology back then, when up had to walk to the TV to change channel to one of the three options, rather than press a button and scroll through hundreds of channels of nothing in particular, the difference is immense. My first computor a ZX81, you should google this bad boy if you have not seen it. It had less storage and power than the TV remote control.
You had to programme the games yourself, which took a week, and then you could make a block move across the screen and either crash into the floor or land on the moon, or more to the point the bottom of the screen. So whilst in theory I am a digital native, I was blown away the other day when my friends kids pick up my phone and started to play with it. Apparently at the age of two, most kids can master the Iphone, if I had seen an Iphone when I was two I would have thought it some kind of which craft. Although this is a theory that any suitably advanced form of technology will appear like magic, hence why when we conquer the world, our fire sticks or guns were pretty devastating.
Another friend, a well known Mountain Guide had to do a review of avalanche trancievers, his test was to hide another transciever somewhere in the house, and see how long it took his son to find it with the ‘digital avalanche transceiver’ without anyone instructions, other than handing it to him in the ‘find’ mode, suffice to say, if your going to get buried alive, make sure your mate has a digital transceiver.
There is an excellent cartoon, that shows a boy and his father. The dad turn to the the boy, and says “if you build my website, I’ll do your homework!” I just wonder how long before technology starts to plateaux out, and those struggling along in the shallow end of the the digital pool will get swept under the in the current of pop culture.
So what are you digital native or digitally naive?
Sorry for the tagental rant