Digital Hobo

I recently came across an article by Marc Prensky regarding the new generation of children in relation to education. The short version is that he labels the current crop of kids as digital natives; those that have grown up with access to email, mobile phones and online games. They perceive and interact with information in a different way to their parents. Prensky goes on to label those that have had to adapt to technology as being digital immigrants. The digital immigrants are those that use current technology and perhaps even have an interest in it to greater or lesser degrees but still function in a more traditional way. As an example, the digital immigrant would be more likely to check the phone book for a restaurant listing than to google it.

Where then do I fit in? I'm not a native, I didn't grow up with a USB for an umbilical cord. I didn't even have a regular email address until 1998. Certainly I have adapted to technology. While not being as proficient as I may like, and certainly not as talented as some of my friends when it comes to computers, I do spend an inordinate amount of time online. So am I an immigrant according to Prensky's definition? Nope, not even. The Net does everything for me. I check the bus timetable here, grab the phone number for my hairdresser and even do much of my socialising with overseas compadres via the Net.

Following Prensky's jargon, I'd have to term myself a digital hobo. I didn't live here to begin with, but I'm certainly not going to leave now that I've settled in. I don't contribute to the Net in any productive way. I don't have a job in IT or Net design of any kind. I'm just kind of mooching off the freeware of others while yearning for a socialist Net in which all information is free, all files transferable and all friends a keystroke away. Continuing this line of thinking, one would have to assume that Blogger then becomes the bridge under which I currently reside.

This all makes me wonder about where things go next. Teenagers currently record their entire lives on a MySpace page, something they do with the fearlessness of youth. What interests me is what happens in 20 years. Will journalists be clever enough to dig up upstart Politician A's old MySpace site where they made thoughtless jibes about single parents? Will an entire life recorded digitally or a popular blog/homepage become the equivalent of an inner-city trendy apartment? Surely a child that grows up online will begin to wonder whether there is any point at all in living a life in the real world when everything they need/want is online waiting for them. Honestly? Things like that don't scare me. I could see it happening to me had I been born a year or two ago. Will people run entire empires here? Where they have untold of online value but no concrete wealth in the real world. What will be of more interest to watch is how the politics of the future develops within this online domain. If you're living globally then surely a set of rules for each and every place (abstract concepts to the digital native) would be of little to no use to you.

Have happy scifi thoughts tonight.