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My first son was born in 1991 and was exposed to all digital solutions since his age allowed him to access them.Hence, hearing about this concept of Digital Natives who might have developed peculiar capabilities thanks to their practice with the new digital world, I am very interested to understand why my son can be so slow to answer a question, so lazy reading a book, so inattentive while jumping from a subject to another, however successful at school, sports and with friends.Then I found this book from John Palfrey and Urs Gasser with a subtitle promising to answer exactly my question.You could say I set a too big expectation for this book. Sometimes also from an adult perspective. May be. But that was my perspective when reading and while writing down this comment.From my perspective Born Digital left my expectation totally unsatisfied.The content is organized in very smartly titled chapters where several aspects of new opportunities provided by Internet are verbosely described from the perspective of a 16 years old girl. But never ever making a consideration about which are the implications into the mindset of a young individual whose development happened completely inside this environment.I believe an sample abstract could be meaningful.From chapter 5. Creators, page 124:
Although they often indulge in platitudes and generalizations, they bring a new, useful focus to the discussion. Many kids under the age of 15 have no idea what a typewriter is. They delve into such important issues as privacy and Internet safety, and they examine how these issues affect young people, in particular. Why would they be familiar with such an outmoded, archaic tool. They are members of "the first generation of digital natives." Internet and law experts John Palfrey and Urs Gasser offer an accessible, informed and concerned investigation into cyberculture. Of necessity with this kind of structure, the authors repeat some of the same points, such as the glut of information and the interconnected nature of online life - but they do so to show how these core factors affect different areas. getAbstract recommends this book to lawmakers, hiring managers, teachers and parents who want to understand life in the cyberculture.
The importance given in the book to the critical thinking shows how deep is t Palfrey and Gasser's concern in this specific point. I am particular amazed with all the problematic concerned with digital dossiers and how many information is possible to collect about each one of us searching on internet. But at the same time the book doesn't ask the deepest anthropological questions. I recognize that the author give a significant importance to the dates from neuroscience. This example gives me the opportunity to highlight one of the most significant goals of this book: made its readers more able to choose and more able to help digital natives being more conscious of the consequences of their options in terms of their relation with the digital world. The main thesis Born Digital is that the passage from the analog paradigm to the digital paradigm is deeply transforming the way how digital natives are living. In fact the authors defend that the attempt to understand our digital era must involve different actors, each one with his or her responsibilities.
There John Palfrey and Urs Gasser do in a balanced way the analysis of the youth generation's violence reception through the new and the old media. The second option that I would like to refer is what I consider the best intuition of Born Digital. We are committed with our context and we can't be scared or alienated spectators that do nothing about what is happened. In fact, being so exhaustive in its descriptions and assuming important apprehensions and hopes, the book fails to do decisive questions. Another good example is the chapter about violence. After reading Born Digital I consider important to analyze some critical points of this book. To explain this idea in a graphic way our actors created a diagram with several circles. By action or omission we participate in the construction of our own culture.
Media Literacy is about helping our students to be conscientious how using the new media and technology they are creating the world and how our perception of the world is transformed in a definitive way by technology. After them we found friends and family, followed by educators, than companies and finally the state and the law. For all that one of the most important attitudes is our ability to dialogue with the digital natives. In the book they analyze with great detail how the digital revolution is affecting so different aspects of live as education, privacy, creativity, the way as we manage information,.Facing all this topics the authors have done two previous options that I consider significantly important. Such deep transformations are affecting their self perception and the way they interact with others and with the reality.
Is fair to recognize that Born Digital is the result of a serious work of research. The advantageous of this choice is to call our attention that the options that we do about the world we are living should be shared. For instances, the first chapter is a real good description about the influences of digital age in the way how digital natives are building and managing there identities.
In my opinion they fail to do a serious Ethic consideration of all these changes: what kind of world are we building and most important what kind of world we want to build. In the inner circle are the digital native that are the most well situated to lead us through this world. We are living a period of transition. What they are learning from the way adults (parents, educators) solve conflicts.
Avoiding an apocalyptic attitude they are able two let us know all the possibilities that the digital era is offering to the new generation. Using Thomas Kuhn concepts we may say that we are in the middle of a paradigmatic change. Two good examples of this problems are the gap between digital natives and those from the same generation that don't have access to technologies as internet, and the problematic of multitasking and its impact on education or daily life. What are the most genuine needs of the human being. Finally I would like to emphasize the absence of what I would like to call an anthropological concern.
What are their fears. Those dates help us to realize how our perception is changing. Born digital seems to me an excessive pragmatic book. Palfrey and Gasser gave to their readers a significant and pertinent amount of dates about all the topics they analyze. First of all, they want to avoid two extreme attitudes: apocalyptic and naïf. But the authors option almost merely descriptive.
Born Digital is a serious tentative of understand the new and emergent digital paradigm where a part of the new generation is living and simultaneously help his readers (specially parents and educators) to do the right questions about it. The consequences are important: Media Literacy isn't about giving our students skills or contents that they will use in a neutral way. Being aware about what is happened in the deep internet where several dates are saved and knowing that normal users don't know how to go there, is important to allowed us to do more conscious choices. But, once more the fail to do same decisive questions: how we are the new generations learning to solve their inner a external conflicts, how they learn to lead with their own aggressively. Using the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire's definition, literacy is about reading the word and reading the world. As it's normal in a period of a paradigmatic change there are a lot of new questions and sometimes we've the temptation of trying to answer to the new questions with the tools and the concepts of the `old paradigm'.
How the digital age is affecting the way we search for this need. Is this new time affecting the way of love and the experience of being loved. But literacy is not only about how to use a specific language. In fact all consternations seem to be related with a practical use of some specific tools. The questions they do may be formulated like this: How to protect ourselves, how to produce, how to create, how to manage information. Avoiding a naïf approach they are able to stress some serious problems.
Are their relations in School excessively based on competition. In fact our relation with the world is never neutral. One of the concepts that I believe is influenced by this pragmatism is authors' idea of Media Literacy. They related in an appropriated way the consequences of that reception with the social and economic context. Born Digital is a good and serious dialogue with this generation, but we need to go deeper.
Although there are no ground breaking epiphanies in this book, I truly appreciated the measured response to digital ubiquity and the effect it has on a generation who knows nothing less.Born Digital is a comprehensive view of what we can expect, an educated guess of the impacts of the first generation of digital natives. Walking through the jagged landscape of digital identities and dossiers, over the quicksand of safety and privacy to the questions of creators, innovators and pirates, overload, aggressors and learners - without the reactionary premature autopsies of generational attrition.The authors, John Palfrey of Harvard and Urs Gasser of U of St. Gallen accept the future that is now realized, and design a discourse to engage the whole community of the digi natives, their parents and teachers, and law makers to build the skill set to protect our youth growing up digital, empowered with knowledge and best practices, instead of preaching abstinence and prohibition, fear tactics and taboos that are sure to push them farther out into the Ethernet and harm's way.Born Digital is comprehensive, insightful, and illuminates the reader to the environment, paradigm and nuances of what it is to be a Digital Native.
For example, there are some issues in the book about privacy, safety and many others in todays digital natives that has no clear solution or in a better words the solution was written in the wrong places. The book has negative and positive issues, which I will explain in the coming paragraphs. After reading Born Digital as a required task for my English 102 class, I found this book very interesting to read. In my opinion, It could have been better for organization if he have set up especial area for his solutions in each chapter or specializing some chapters for solutions.Second, this book have opened my mind to many issues about technology and digital natives that I never thought about, which is a positive thing that every reader is looking for. First, I realized some negative issues while I was reading this book such as the lack of organization. The author could have done better in organizing the Born Digital book. For instance, the information quality in our network and how too many bad qualities such as violence games, sexual shows could have a big effect on our kids behaviors. This is only one from many issues that the book have discussed to knowledge the readers about.Over all, the book was very beneficial to me and I highly recommend everyone to read it.
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