Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

Monday, June 11th, 2012

Digital Natives

Digital Natives.

No doubt you have heard the term.

I kind of imagine pixelated caricatures dressed in feathers and palm fronds – who were downloaded rather than born and who were recharged rather than nursed.

Or worse, the Natives, as seen in Gangs of New York, and we know what they did to the immigrants….

Seems, though, that many Digital Natives take themselves very seriously—very, very seriously indeed. In their minds nothing existed before digital – meaning themselves. In fact, I had one such denizen recently tell me that music in any other form really isn’t music…so it goes.  Tell it to Beethoven or the Beatles or any YouTube band trying to be a phenomena group, not to mention the savvy Digital Natives who crave vinyl records – not for the Luddite factor – but rather because the music sounds more authentic, real, warm.

Here is what I find astounding and ridiculous in the whole notion of Digital Natives – worse, here is what I fear and loath – not to mention what I believe is antithetical to the entire age we live in:

To begin with, there is more than a hint of Lord of the Flies here – and the ignorance that often attaches itself to those who believe themselves “natives” – of anything – frankly frightens me.

Far from this being a world of Digital Natives, we live in a world where age compression on one end and longevity on the other have created – for the first time that I know – a continuum of purpose and value between the oldest and the youngest. Both my two-year-old grandson and my 85-year-old father-in-law have iPads, both are proficient in its use and frankly, both use it the same way – if not for the same things.

We live in a time defined not by Digital Natives and Immigrants but by Generation World. A universe where age, borders and demographics mean less than shared values. An epoch where traditional segmentation means little as communities and interest groups form and coalesce in a multi-hued tapestry never before seen – generation gaps are being eliminated in social movements and culture – unlike the 1960s when being over 30 was considered traitorous and there was little if no age or other heterogeneity in anything.

We share, we shop, we read, we watch, we listen – sometimes digitally but almost always with some digital enhancement that links our flesh-and-blood world to the digital enablement we now have – Digital Exponential – our ability to bridge all our worlds: to shop in an Apple Store in person or buy online 24/7, to go to a movie theater or download or stream our favorite shows or movies. Buy the book, cover and all, or just buy its content; go to the concert live or watch it online (well, that really predates the Natives…see The Last Waltz for one).

And we still go to new restaurants – proliferating by the way – and use Pinterest to share our favorite dishes, we crowd the aisles of UNIQLO, and help sell out concert after concert around the world.

I have written much about the Waldorf Schools, but one thought stuck in my mind when one of the Digital Elite said that his kid would learn to use a computer in minutes. (“It’s supereasy. It’s like learning to use toothpaste. At Google and all these places, we make technology as brain-dead easy to use as possible. There’s no reason why kids can’t figure it out when they get older,” says Alan Eagle, an executive at Google.)

We have made it that simple (catch this experiment as detailed in Wired‘s print edition: Researchers from Tufts University and the MIT Media Lab this Spring dropped off a few solar-powered tablets to kids in a small Ethiopian village, where there is no electricity and essentially zero literacy. With no instruction, the twenty children ages 4 to 12 began using the devices within 18 minutes. After the first week, the kids were using 47 apps.) – but that he needed to learn to think and reason.  Being a Digital Native doesn’t make that a slam dunk…not even close.

So rather than basking in the pride of being born into a digital age that was, by the way, created by immigrants (sound familiar?), Digital Natives should be leading the way in taking the best of what we know and turning it into the best of what the next generation will need to develop the next big thing.

And then, my dear Digital Natives, you will be mere immigrants as well…unless….

Windows emulates MAC, Amazon emulates the old Sears Catalog, Facebook emulates our DNA- driven behavior, You Tube and whatever else emulates TV, Pandora and Spotify emulate radio, all try to emulate (old-fashioned LOL) advertising in order to exist and we should all try to emulate Steve Jobs…listen:

“A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have. “
Steve Jobs

Don’t get me wrong – before all the emails come pouring in – I love Digital Natives – my children, my grandchildren, and in truth all the people I learn from….

But I want to learn from people who are not unidimensional – who define themselves by today’s technology – I want to learn from people who can teach me about today’s technology but who can also share and teach me about values…and who themselves want broad and diverse experiences so that they can – in fact – create the next big thing.

What do you think?

 

Also appeared on The Huffington Post

Posted by David on 06/11 at 05:05 PM
  • From Wikipedia (extract): "A digital native is a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technologia and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts. Alternatively, this term can describe people born during or after the latter 1960s, as the Digital Age began at that time; but ...
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    Posted by Jessica Wawoe on 2012-06-13 20:15:34
  • We’re gonna getcha. We are going to get you where you may not even know when, where and how we gotcha. We get you when you’re driving (radio ads and billboards). We get you when you’re watching tv. We get you when you’re on your laptop, tablet or smartphone. And if you try to avoid us by switching us off ...
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    Posted by Shah on 2012-06-13 18:17:11
  • This isn't about age, it's about acceptance (indeed, embracing) things that are new AND USEFUL. I'm in my seventh decade, and I think of myself as a digital native. I was building intranets and web sites when you had to learn to code in HTML and Java to do so, because there weren't any tools. I download movies and TV ...
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    Posted by Richard Tooker on 2012-06-13 17:33:24
Monday, May 14th, 2012

Between Us and Total Chaos

Lord of the Flies:  Sir William Golding’s epic novel of the relationship between human nature and society, and the breakdown that occurs when the safeguards that society creates to  protect itself start to crumble.

I first read the book in junior high school, as the waves created by 1960s American social change and protest began to crash into my consciousness. I came of age in a time when “law and order” bumped into personal freedom, and what would seem, at first glance – maybe – to be two very complementary concepts clashed as, at their extremes, one became an oversimplified icon of police-state thinking and the other became a caricature of lack of accountability and seriousness.

And the book resonated. Where was the middle ground? The sweet spot between the glue that held society together and the anarchy of doing whatever you wanted – more important, what would happen if the bonds loosened? What would I do? What would you do?

The real question – as I see it – relates to absolutes – primal imprints – do we need laws or does human nature automatically take over and self-correct, so that we stay centered and behave in a manner that separates us from our nonhuman neighbors. Do we become the very monsters we fear or do we transcend?

If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it and will leave you with this thought quoted from the manuscript – “Maybe there is a beast….maybe it’s only us.”

Maybe it’s only us – clearly there is enough proof in the past century and this one too, to suggest that way too often it is us – and sometimes us with laws to justify our actions…maybe the worst combination of law and order and anarchy – in fact, since the dawn of time such has been the case.

On a smaller scale, it’s evident in personal and business relationships when self takes precedence and “the end justifies the means” becomes the normative operating philosophy.

So again – the question is, what really stands between us and total chaos? Clearly laws alone don’t cut it – and in fact, can be perverted for evil as well.

Listen:

“Laws control the lesser man.  Right conduct controls the greater one.”  Chinese Proverb

And there you have it – right conduct – an absolute – a primal imprint – a filter by which to judge what we do, what we support, what we champion.

We need laws – for sure – but as we know, laws are easy to break or ignore or worse, enact for the wrong reasons.

The book ends – “I should have thought that a pack of British boys…would have been able to put up a better show than that.”

What kind of show will we put on?

What do you think?

Posted by David on 05/14 at 12:50 PM
  • Matt -- good point -- much has been written about those who follow a "higher being" and in the name of that deity kill those who dont accept it. Way too many examples -- past and present -- to mention.
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    Posted by david sable on 2012-05-15 18:08:13
  • I have to call shenanigans on the notion that man must look to a higher being for guidance with regard to 'right conduct'. One doesn't need a deity to contemplate philosophical issues (such as morality). . In relation to Goldings tale, the kids had been taught about 'right conduct' but hadnt really contemplated it, hence when there was no ...
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    Posted by Matt on 2012-05-15 17:46:37
  • Remember in the movie, “Goodfellas”, the day the FBI zoomed down on Ray Liotta’s character, Henry Hill? That day, Hill was on top of his game. He had all of everything in his pocket; all the plates were spinning. He was making a feast for his buddies with multiple pots of sauce, pasta, meatballs; you name it, on ...
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    Posted by joette spinelli on 2012-05-15 14:36:23
Monday, April 30th, 2012

Making Money from Scoops

Here is an ethical question.

Can a news source make money from its scoops – beyond the obvious – and will I keep reading the source if they continue to scoop?

The question is raised by Felix Salmon, the finance blogger on Reuters – somewhat facetiously I thought…until I thought about it and read the comments posted around his own posting.

Read on:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/04/24/could-the-nyt-make-money-from-its-scoops/

Bottom line – companies pay for access to information. In today’s world they pay for access to ever more relevant and ever more instant sources. If I hired a research company to unearth that same information few would argue that I don’t have the right to benefit from it. But a news source? A storied institution like the New York Times? Don’t they have a compact with the public? Don’t all credible news institutions have that same sense of accountability?

Yet already I can pay the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and others to get digital access to their news and thus get it faster and before the print edition is even composed. And, if I go back in time – isn’t buying a daily subscription the same thing? I get it early in the morning – read it with my coffee and muffin and get a jump on the guy who picks it up on the way in. In fact I remember stories of people who would wait outside the printing plants to get the first copy of a given newspaper in the old days.

So – it would seem, at first glance, that in our digital world there is no additional ethical or moral issue – like most things it’s just an evolution and adaptation of understood and accepted behavior.

Or is it? HMMMMMMM….

Read the posts and tell me what you think.

My going in view was much the same as one of the contributors – a trusted news source has to be held to a different standard than a scandal rag – and I might be tempted to add that in a world where credibility, relevance and trust are becoming blurred subjects, I might feel even more strongly about that point and hope that they hew to a more rigorous interpretation of their charter.

In fact I might argue that if they fall prey to the temptation it actually lowers their future competitive advantage.

Last point – notice all the anonymity in the postings – my position on that has never changed – unless you are in a country where you fear for your life the opportunity to misuse hiding behind a curtain is too tempting for too many…and adds to the danger of having no credible sources left for benchmarking information and, yes, even behavior.

Listen:

“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”
Samuel Johnson

I think this about sums it up. Interestingly, many weighed in on this, from the Greek and Roman philosophers to Benjamin Franklin to many of today’s most famous pundits.

Not a problem created by our age but one still very relevant and very much on people’s minds.

What do you think?

Posted by David on 04/30 at 06:43 PM
  • It is interesting how many sites are now making the move from freeview into pay for content models - most recently was the Times UK. I guess most people expect that the publications online should be free, whilst paper copies should not - however a business is a business and any profit made off the back of covering operating costs ...
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    Posted by Suzanne Donovan on 2012-05-07 04:36:56