In terms of up-to-dateness, as the book was published in August of 2008, and having read the excerpt, for the most part the information is up to date and extremely relevant, which I see as a strength given the rapid development of the technology it mentions. Of course, it shouldn’t be very long before even this is out of date and not reflective of the way in which the digital natives use technology.
A criticism I would make of the web-site is the irony in that the excerpt describes the way in which digital natives are able to share information digitally, by posting it to a blog, sharing a URL, e-mailing an online recommendation. However, no where on the site does it enable any of these things to happen. I would have expected a hyperlink, such as in the image I have posted, to share it via facebook, twitter, delicious, myspace or any of the other ways to bookmark or recommend it embedded into the site in order to take advantage of hypertextuality which is a fundamental part of the digital natives understanding of new technologies. However, here it seems that the reader will have to externally log into any of these sites
to be able to tell their friends about it, which to me seems ironic for a book which describes the different, new ways in which the digital natives can easily share information and how important this is. Maybe this was overlooked by the digital immigrants who produced the information!URL: http://www.borndigitalbook.com/excerpt.php
You've highlighted a good point here, how books and the internet can contain some of the same information but the opposite notions of 'digtal natives' and 'digital immigrants' are more likely to access this information through different media. However, would 'digital immigrants' necessarily overlook this information, I think the extent to which 'digital immigrants' are seen to be incompatable with online information is exaggurated.
ReplyDeleteCooking with gas again it seems!
ReplyDeleteIt does seem as if in lots of the things I've been reading on this topic that digital immigrants are represented as being incapable of learning the language of NMC to just a high a level as the natives.
ReplyDeleteIf digital immigrants were able to immerse themselves in a virtual settlement, I think that it is just as possible for them to learn the language that the natives are using. It might take more practice and integration in it before it is completely natural. But nonetheless I would argue that it is possible to completley loose the 'accent'.