Digital Natives and Wellsian Thumbs

Further to my previous post (‘The Future’) on my responses to Phil Dick and Wellsian evolution I discovered this write up on ‘Digital Natives’. Aside form the definitions of the ‘digital native’ which are interesting in themselves there was this information about the digital native’s use of the thumb:

“Microsoft [brought up] the notion that kids of tomorrow would evolve differently from those of today, in the physical sense. They quoted the example of a person ringing a doorbell. You or I would walk up to the doorbell and push the button - but we would more than likely use our index finger to push the bell. A Digital Native on the other hand would more than likely use their thumb - because with all the thousands of hours of texting on mobile phones and playing nintendo they’ve been doing it’s logical to assume (according to Microsoft) that over time these kids will evolve larger and more flexible thumbs”.

It is strange to discover that my evolutionary predictions, said in jest, are being theorized in reality. I think the word it 'thumbidextrous'.

On another note, this paper on digital natives and digital immigrants is very interesting, and possibly worthy of debate. I feel it’s worth quoting some of it here (although you can follow the link to the full paper).

"...
Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

Today’s students represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Today’s average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV). Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.
It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. These differences go far further and deeper than most educators suspect or realize.

What should we call these “new” students of today? Some refer to them as the N-[for Net]-gen or D-[for digital]-gen. But the most useful designation I have found for them is Digital Natives. Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.

So what does that make the rest of us? Those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital Immigrants.

The importance of the distinction is this: As Digital Immigrants learn – like all immigrants, some better than others – to adapt to their environment, they always retain, to some degree, their "accent," that is, their foot in the past. The “digital immigrant accent” can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first, or in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it. Today’s older folk were "socialized" differently from their kids, and are now in the process of learning a new language. And a language learned later in life, scientists tell us, goes into a different part of the brain.

The single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.

Lest this perspective appear radical, rather than just descriptive, let me highlight some of the issues. Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work. (Does any of this sound familiar?)

But Digital Immigrants typically have very little appreciation for these new skills that the Natives have acquired and perfected through years of interaction and practice. These skills are almost totally foreign to the Immigrants, who themselves learned – and so choose to teach – slowly, step-by-step, one thing at a time, individually, and above all, seriously. “My students just don’t _____ like they used to,” Digital Immigrant educators grouse. I can’t get them to ____ or to ____. They have no appreciation for _____ or _____ . (Fill in the blanks, there are a wide variety of choices.)

Digital Immigrant teachers assume that learners are the same as they have always been, and that the same methods that worked for the teachers when they were students will work for their students now. But that assumption is no longer valid. Today’s learners are different. “Www.hungry.com” said a kindergarten student recently at lunchtime. “Every time I go to school I have to power down,” complains a high-school student. Is it that Digital Natives can’t pay attention, or that they choose not to? Often from the Natives’ point of view their Digital Immigrant instructors make their education not worth paying attention to compared to everything else they experience – and then they blame them for not paying attention!

And, more and more, they won’t take it. “I went to a highly ranked college where all the professors came from MIT,” says a former student. “But all they did was read from their textbooks. I quit.” In the giddy internet bubble of a only a short while ago – when jobs were plentiful, especially in the areas where school offered little help – this was a real possibility. But the dot-com dropouts are now returning to school. They will have to confront once again the Immigrant/Native divide, and have even more trouble given their recent experiences. And that will make it even harder to teach them – and all the Digital Natives already in the system – in the traditional fashion.

In math, for example, the debate must no longer be about whether to use calculators and computers – they are a part of the Digital Natives’ world – but rather how to use them to instill the things that are useful to have internalized, from key skills and concepts to the multiplication tables. We should be focusing on “future math” – approximation, statistics, binary thinking.
In geography – which is all but ignored these days – there is no reason that a generation that can memorize over 100 Pokémon characters with all their characteristics, history and evolution can’t learn the names, populations, capitals and relationships of all the 181 nations in the world. It just depends on how it is presented.

We need to invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels, using our students to guide us.

So if Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives – i.e. all their students – they will have to change. It’s high time for them to stop their grousing, and as the Nike motto of the Digital Native generation says, “Just do it!” They will succeed in the long run – and their successes will come that much sooner if their administrators support them.
(Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants By Marc Prensky From On the Horizon (NCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001) )


..."

The Future?

Recently I have been re-reading Explorations of the Marvellous – a series of lectures given at the institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1975. In this collection is a paper by Philip K. Dick, called “Man, Android, Machine”. Dick unfortunately was too unwell to deliver his talk at the time, but his lecture is still included in the printed anthology, a real treat as Dick’s writings (fictional and non-fictional) are always thought provoking and interesting. In this printed lecture, one sentence particularly caught my eye. He states:

“The greatest change growing across our world these days is probably the momentum of the living towards reification, and at the same time a reciprocal entry into animation by the mechanical.”

Obviously, this statement arises as a result of Dick’s personal paranoia about the nature of the (blurring) boundaries between what is human and what is machine, and his distrust of machines that appear life-like (or at least simulate a manifestation of human emotions or actions). 33 years on, I wonder if this statement – based on an extrapolative vision of the future of technology – is as true as it once seemed. I think that nowadays technology is not necessarily about simulating life; the increase in mobile technology means that it has become more an extension of the self. What is being formed through the progression of technology is more cyborg than android.

Dick’s statement that: “We hold no pure categories of the living versus the non living” (my emphasis) is truer than he possibly thought. Whereas he is referring to the reification of the human and the animation of the machine, his statement is accurate today in a different way - in that human and machine function in conjunction with one another. At its least invasive level, technology (through increasing mobility and miniaturisation) functions as accessory, and at its most intrusive level it is deemed necessity.

For example: who in generation Y is without a mobile phone? With a camera on it? And a variety of other functions. How many people deem this technology necessary (cries of ‘I couldn’t live without my phone’ can be heard everywhere). I myself carry round a phone that is a camera, mp3 player, personal organiser, internet browser, radio, calculator, converter, stop watch, alarm clock, document reader, games machine and least of all phone. This technology, like the mobile pc on which I’m writing this, is not animated as such, it is more an extension – or vehicle for expression – of my own animation. Nevertheless, I have to wonder; does this type of combination of human and technology result in reification?
I fear it may.

I have often been heard joking that Wells’s vision of the future of humanity, posited in The Man of the Year Million, is no longer (metaphorically) accurate. Wells foresaw that the species would evolve into large heads (to accommodate great brains holding vast intelligence) and large hands (the teachers and agents of the brain) while the rest of the body would become simpler and less prominent. I would argue, however, that it is more likely that evolution will result in smaller heads housing enormous staring eyes; and large hands will be replaced by giant, hypertrophied thumbs able to type text messages and manipulate games controllers with great skill. Based on our current technology, this seems to be a more accurate Wellsian vision of the future.

Dick recognised, and feared, that humans and machines could potentially become indistinguishable, especially if machines imitate human behaviour. His discussion depends on the human and the machine being seen as separate entities. However, what if human evolution were to allow us to become more comfortably ‘one’ with the machine? We wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two, because we would be the machines.

Perhaps Dick wasn’t as paranoid as he should have been?
Now that’s not something you get to say every day.

NB: All of this assumes, of course, a continuing growth of technology and a hypothetical Wellsian model of evolution. This may not actually be the case at all. Not because of the metaphorical nature of some of the concepts discussed here, but because there is no guarantee that there will be any such progression of technology or evolution in the way we currently conceive it. Reflecting the contemporary apocalypticism that permeates our 21st Century culture (with global warming, terrorist threats, declining resources etc) I propose the idea that maybe technological ‘advancement’ as we know it will inevitably have to come to an end. Perhaps, as the earth’s resources are used up, only an elite will have access to technology, the rest of us will devolve into primitivism. That is, of course, if the race is to survive at all. Dick himself said, the universe is kind to us,” it must like and accept us or we would not be here”. He quotes Abraham Maslow, who concludes, ‘otherwise nature would have executed us long ago’.
The question now is, has nature gone off us?

Either way, what we have here are two extremes. As usual the future most likely lies, not somewhere in between, but somewhere completely unexpected.

The Horror! The Horror!

Check out Peter's new blog - I finally convinced him that he should have one (with some additional prodding from friends).

Orbital 2008

Orbital: Eastercon 2008

We have just spent 5 fantastic days at Orbital – the annual science fiction convention. This year it was hosted at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel at Heathrow. Over 1200 sf fans got together over the Easter weekend to meet up, discuss and share their enjoyment of sf.


One of the strangest things about being at a con is the fact that you enter a self-contained world. Once inside the hotel we went for the Star Trek type womb fantasy of 'this hotel is our self contained, all providing universe for the next 5 days'. It's amazing how quickly it is possible to adapt to being in a place - so that the outside world seems unreal. The surrounding areas seemed so divorced from the convention that when we got another glimpse of them from the car park as we were leaving, 'normality' had taken on an unfamiliar, alien quality. Semi-detached houses and urban decay - the norm when we arrived at the hotel, seemed strangely out of place after spending all that time amongst marble and wood and crisp sheets and thick white towels. Now, back home our house too feels like an alien space - devoid of fans, real ale and booksellers. It has been a strange day today, reacclimatizing and getting over a strange sense of grief that the con is over for another year (to try to overcome our post con depression, we have, like Mr Roy and Procrastinatrix booked for the next 2 years).

In terms of the con itself here are the highlights:

The hotel. This was the first time I’ve ever stayed in a 5 star hotel. It seems to me that, aesthetically at least, what distinguishes the 5 star hotel from the other varieties, is the fact that it is made primarily of marble and wood. So, as you can imagine, it was beautiful, if a little strange in its décor. On the one hand there was marble floors, wood panelling, enormous chandeliers and on the other there were areas that were modern, including illuminated bridges (like something out of a 1920s musical) over glass areas with glass fish, but surrounded by old fashioned statues and antiques from around the world. Anyway, it was delightfully posh – so posh there was a phone in the en suite and in the public loos were individual towels to dry your hands – yes – real towels (must admit though these disappeared as 1200 guests arrived!).

The discussion panels. Except for one where one of the panellists was clearly rather drunk, the panels were great. I particularly enjoyed the one on our future survival on this changing planet and the one on surveillance societies – these 2 will get separate blog posts about their discussions at a later date. I even enjoyed being mocked about going to a panel which had on it a certain author whose book I reviewed rather negatively recently. The reason I was mocked (apart from the fact this author is now one of my editors) was because the panel’s subject matter was ‘should authors respond to reviews?’. I got all kinds of threats that I would be named and shamed. My only consolation was that Christopher Priest, who was also on the panel, had also written a negative review of this author’s work in the past too. So at least I wasn’t alone.

The guest of honour talks:

China Mieville, as well as turning out to be a really nice guy and friend of someone we work with (weird in itself – small world) gave a great talk. Again the subject matter will be a blog post for a later date. But his speech sparked a fantastic debate about the death of the author that night in the real ale bar (discussions at length over a beer are officially one of my hobbies and since cons are just like a 5 day version of that it’s no wonder I had a good time).

Niel Gaiman read some fantastic pieces of writing to us and spoke very entertainingly. Although not as intellectual as China Mievill’s talk, Gaiman’s was interesting, amusing, and when he read his fiction, captivating.

Charles Stross. Went to this one a bit late. Met Geoff Ryman and had a little chat with him and we decided to sneak into Stross’s talk. Geoff is so tall I manged to use him to hide behind. Stross’s speech was more technology based that the other two talks. Interesting in a different way I suppose.

The dealer’s room. Got some great stuff this year. A couple of books on Lovecraft I’m very pleased with and there will probably be another blog post on those at some point. Best of all though I managed to get some fantastic 1920s sf magazines with some great story titles – ‘Vibrator of Death’ definitely warrants another blog post – expect that one immanently!

Meeting up with some great people – got to see some old friends and make some new ones.

The general mix that you get at cons of fans, authors, academics etc all chat in to one another in one great melting pot.

The real ale bar.

The food. This was the best convention food I’ve had, especially considering the amount of people being catered for. The only problem is that all that good food has had waistline implications. All I’m going to say is that P. has put on 4lb since we went away. And since he is officially the thinnest man ever there’s no hope for the rest of us! I blame pastries at breakfast…


I’m going to finish by saying that the con organisers deserve a massive thank you – this was the best Eastercon we’ve been to.

I shall blog again (when I get time) about some of the points mentioned in this post – particularly ‘Vibrator of Death’. I’ll also post the photos on my facebook as soon as poss…


P.S. Arthur C. Clarke - RIP

'Trusted' information

I was interested to read an academic journal article recently that had wikipedia listed in its sources.

What shall we find in bibliographies next?

Bloggs Bob, (3/1/07) ‘Conversation with my mate in the pub’, (recalled 18/3/08)?

The Brick Testament

This website is fantastic. The Bible told in Lego. And since we all know that Lego is the toy of the Gods, there's a nice symmetry.

Credit must go to Mister Roy for finding this... a slightly more normal discovery than his best beloved, Procrastinatrix, who discovered this website all about Kitlers.

The internet is a strange place indeed...

The Year of the Sex Olympics

Further to my last post, I got to thinking about television and the way it has gone in recent years (reality TV, endless shows like Dancing on Ice, X Factor Pop Idol etc) and it brought to mind 1968s The Year of the Sex Olympics.
Prophecy? I think so.