Week 8 Website 3 Digital Immigration

This website talks about the problem with 'digital natives', 'digial immigrants' and the 'digital generation'. The author of this article disagrees with the fact that all young people today are 'born digital' and are part of some 'special or distinct experiential universe that grants them special prowess or powers and blinds them to other things' for example only been able to learn through video or pictures rather than picking up a book. What lead him to believe this is the fact that he doesnt believe that 'generations' are meaningful social categories. For instance its like saying that all people who were born before 1974 are uncapable and not familiar with using the latest technology juat because they havnt't been born into it. They could have the same level of knowledge if not more than somebody who has been born into this new technological society.

Further down the article the theorist Henry Jenkins talks about how "digital natives" help us to recognize and respect the new kinds of learning and cultural expression which have emerged from a generation that has come of age alongside the personal and networked computer. He raises the issues about youth as as digiatl natives implies that there is a world which these young people all share a body of knowledge that they have all learnt and mastered together, rather tahn seeing the online world as unfamiliar and uncertain for all of us.