Here's an idea.
There is no such thing as a digital native.
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In his 2001 paper, Digital Natives Digital Immigrants,
Marc Prensky described a fundamental shift.
He called it a discontinuity in modern students.
He says that all of the technology in their lives
has changed the way that they behave
and maybe even their brains.
He describes these modern young'uns as digital natives.
He writes, "our students today are all native speakers
of the digital language of computers,
video games, and the internet."
To Prensky, all oldies generally,
but many teachers specifically are digital immigrants.
He wrote, "those of us who were not born into the digital world
but later in our lives became fascinated by and adopted many
or most aspects of the new technology,
are digital immigrants."
Since Prensky's paper, digital nativity
as both an idea and thing to call youngsters
has stuck like Flick's tongue to that pole.
Along with millennial, which is my favorite thing
to be called ever, digital native
describes a group of people who have grown up
alongside or along with everyone's
favorite global network of machines and technology
related to it.
But it doesn't just describe an age range in the way
that Gen X or Baby Boomer does.
It defines an age range and an intimate familiarity
with technology that comes as a free side dish,
like baked beans at the barbecue place
of generational demarcations.
For instance, last year CNN described digital natives
as being defined by the technology they're
familiar with.
In their book, "Born Digital," John Palfrey and Urs Gasser
wrote, "the digital natives were all
born after 1980 when social digital technologies
like Usenet and bulletin board systems came online,
and they all have the skills to use those technologies.
The kids with their Facebooks and their Snapchats
and the YouTube, and the iPhones,
they have an innate preternatural sense
about that which contains computer chips, something
that anyone born before 1980 won't ever have."
This doesn't make the digital immigrant clueless, by the way,
it just means that they have to learn.
And they might retain what Prensky calls
a digital immigrant accent.
Now, it's not the claims of potential differences
between cognition or behavior or learning style that
inspire in me a kind of sideways stank eye.
Though I am generally not in favor of the argument
that the internet changes us into different people, but I do
have some gripey questioning eyebrows
about the common assumption that there
is something automatic about someone's
technological expertise if they are below a certain age.
I mean, there are plenty of things
to get gripey about here, like the weird imperialist
twinge imparted by distinguishing
between natives and immigrants.
The fact that generational lines are way too broad,
even Palfrey and Gasser prefer to describe digital natives
as a population and not a generation.
And the weird implication that digital immigrants can never
become natives.
That's the point of the distinction, right?
Like, wasn't the internet built by people in the age
range we would readily label digital immigrant?
I mean, fair enough.
Vint Cerf, the inventor of TCP, might not be using Snapchat,
but I think it's fair to say he's probably
comfortable with modern technology.
And this is the potential problem with digital nativity.
It creates a common, though not always true, relationship
that maybe could cause some trouble down the road.
Like if we're thinking that the kids, they're
the tech diviners and the chip whisperers,
is there a danger in assuming that they don't need
to be taught how to computer?
Because no one is born a native speaker of digital
in the same way no one is born a native speaker of any language.
Through context and immersion and practice, they learn.
But language is everywhere, and though it may seem as though
they are computers, aren't.
They are very present in many cultural and social contexts,
and they are a huge part of our everyday lives.
But they are a privilege that not everyone has total access
to.
And if they do, access doesn't come
prepackaged with understanding.
It's kind of like how we grow up watching and interacting
with media like books, television shows, and movies
our whole lives.
And you could know every line from every episode
of everything from "American Horror Story" to "Zoey 101,"
but that doesn't necessarily mean
you understand the capabilities, functions,
and possibilities of media.
This baby though, he's using an iPad.
He just gets it.
Never mind the fact that this is a very common object,
his father's iPad that he's probably seen his dad use 1,000
times, and it depicts objects that he
already has a familiarity with, and blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah.
Anyway, I'm not going to deny that there's
a difference in attitude about technology
between whippersnappers and fogies.
Wireless internet will always be amazing, invisible magic
to me, maybe in the same way that a phonograph
was to someone born in the mid 19th century.
I don't know.
Maybe.
However, if you're 13, you would be more than forgiven
for just thinking, yeah, that's a thing that we have.
I wonder if that attitude really does indicate a nativitude
or nativitasity.
Furthermore, if in calling people digital natives,
we're coercing comfort into knowledgability,
which are definitely not the same thing, and certainly
not automatic.
Chris Jones wrote for "Learning, Media And technology"
that generational changes in attitudes towards technology
are quote "mediated by the purposeful adoption
of technology by young people who act purposefully
and in relation to influential institutional contexts."
In other words, though it might seem natural, it's not.
It's learned and maybe even institutionalized.
It's no more natural than learning
how to read, use a fork, or do the Dougie.
Prensky even did revise his original idea
to the much more fluid digital wisdom
instead of digital nativity.
So maybe the semantic divide is another expression
of a longstanding reflex we have to assign
distinctive characteristics to every generation,
like Gen X-ers were, like, what is the point of any of this?
And millennials are whizzes with computers.
I'm right on the cusp, so just give me
a second while I Google to figure out
what the point of all this is.
What do you guys think?
Are there digital natives and digital immigrants?
Let us know in the comments, and since we
know you're all already whizzes with the YouTubels,
you know what to do.
Appropriately enough, it feels as though it has been eons.
Let's see what Doctor Who means to you guys.
But actually before we get to comments from the Corrections
and Retractions Department, David Lowery,
who we mentioned in the Thanksgiving episode reached
out to us to let us know that we got a bunch of our facts
wrong as far as the NMPA versus lyrics websites are concerned.
Mr. Lowery let us know that he did not
work in concert with the NPMA to DMCA these websites.
He, rather, did research and wrote a paper
that the NMPA used as a starting point for their legal action.
The purpose of Lowery's research,
to which we've placed a link in the description
if you want to check it out, is to collect and give context
to these websites that are not thought to have
a good claim to fair use.
That being said, there is maybe one website, Rap Genius, which
provides additional context.
But even they have settled with the NMPA indicating that,
maybe they don't even think they have the best fair use case.
Well, this is really, really interesting stuff.
And I think that there's probably
a future episode in this.
So thanks again to David Lowery for reaching out
to us to let us know that we got those things wrong.
If you want to know more about his research, you can check.
We put some links in the description.
Please do so.
All right.
Now, on to Doctor Who.
Mayanpaw says that the doctor is someone
who has seen the worst in the world
but still sees it as something that is worth protecting.
And I think that that is something
that we can all aspire to, that in light
of all of the terrible stuff that we see,
we still have this hopefulness.
But, yeah, that's a good read on the doctor.
Damian Southwell says that the doctor for them
is about a childlike wonder about the world.
And I think that's the other thing
that I love about the relationship between the doctor
and the companions, that they allow
him to see the world anew.
And I think that's, yeah, that's a really exciting part
of the universe and the story.
I agree.
[INAUDIBLE] takes a slightly darker tact
and says that the doctor for them
is about the loneliness of the thinking man's
life and the sort of loneliness of being a traveler.
Which I think is also, yeah, there
is that dark side of the doctor that you see,
and maybe this is definitely part of it, right?
Dark past.
Elliott Collins very rightly points out
that many comic book characters do, in fact,
go through the same kind of rebirth that the doctor does,
though I do think that the doctor's regeneration is
different from most new comic book continuities.
But, yes.
Fair point.
Idris K. points out the Time Lord is not
a race but rather a rank, and that the doctor
is, in fact, Galiffreyan.
That is his race.
Yes, I knew that.
[INAUDIBLE] points out some continuity
that suggests there could at some point
be a doctor who is not white and also not a man
and also says that the proximity of Gallifreyans to humans
suggest that there could at some point be a gender fluid doctor.
I don't know.
We'll see.
Adam Anachronism says that whatever
happens to the doctor in future regenerations
as far as his race and sex are concerned, whatever,
but that he most certainly shouldn't be American.
And I think I tend to agree.
The doctor kind of has to be English, right?
For RonDosa it seems like the doctor is
about this kind of paradox of largeness but then also detail
and that the doctor is this very powerful character who
can strike fear into the hearts of Daleks everywhere,
but that he's also this-- he's a person or a being that
has meaningful relationships and has
all of these small details and opinions and ideas.
And he's a complicated character just like the universe.
For EchoBryton, the doctor is a reminder
of how great humanity is, because seeing humanity
in the doctor's eyes helps you understand why he feels as
though it is important to save.
And I think that that is, yeah.
I'm going to start getting a little emotional if we
don't wrap this up.
And on that note, this week's episode
was brought to you by the hard work of these people who
have trained for a very long time
to be as good as they are at using computers.
We have an IRC and a Subreddit, links in the description,
and the tweet of the week comes from known human
who points us towards a fictional documentary written
by Douglas Adams.
You should watch it, Douglas Adams.
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