Digital immigrants speak a different language to digital natives

John Naughton electrified last week's Society of Editors conference when in a passionate personal polemic he savaged newspaper coverage of today's youth.

There is much here to commend Naughton, the sad thing is he "electrified people." Who is he electrifying? Its common sense... its well documented... we have blogged on the subject Big media vs. The people. Rupert tells it how it is || The digital holes in the digital cheese as two examples. But perhaps Naughton like us, speaks a different language? Or, our accents are so heavy we are cannot communicate with some of those around us

Here's what he said ...

Today's 21-year-olds were born in 1985. The internet was two years old in January that year, and Nintendo launched 'Super Mario Brothers', the first blockbuster game. When they were going to primary school in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee was busy inventing the world wide web. The first SMS message was sent in 1992, when these kids were seven. Amazon and eBay launched in 1995. Hotmail was launched in 1996, when they were heading towards secondary school.

Around that time, pay-as-you-go mobile phone tariffs arrived, enabling teenagers to have phones, and the first instant messaging services appeared. Google launched in 1998, just as they were becoming teenagers. Napster and Blogger.com launched in 1999 when they were doing GCSEs. Wikipedia and the iPod appeared in 2001. Early social networking services appeared in 2002 when they were doing A-levels. Skype launched in 2003, as they were heading for university, and YouTube launched in 2005, as they were heading toward graduation.

A Parallel Universe

These kids have been socially conditioned in a universe that runs parallel to the one inhabited by most folks in the media business. They've been playing computer games of mind-blowing complexity forever. They're resourceful, knowledgeable and natural users of computer and communications technology. They're Digital Natives - accustomed to creating content of their own - and publishing it. (Remember the motto of YouTube: 'Broadcast yourself!')

Digital curated consumption

They buy music from the iTunes store - but continue to download tracks illicitly as well. They use BitTorrent to get US editions of Lost. They think 'Google' is a synonym for 'research' and regard it as quite normal to maintain and read blogs (55 million as of last night), use Skype to talk to their mates and upload photos to Flickr. Some even write entries on Wikipedia. And they know how to use iMovie or Adobe Premiere to edit videos and upload them to YouTube.

And thats the thing, its really understanding these issues - because if you can - one perhaps can start to see a strategy emerging of how to survive. Thanks John Naughton for sticking a poker up the Society of Editors I do hope everyone was listening?

The young disengage with politics || Generation "C"ers growing up on digital technology || Smart learning for the future || What happens when majority access web via mobile phone || Henry Jenkins et al on participatory culture and media literacy || Democratising TV. The Al Gore way || politics - communities and communication technologies || Prime time vs peak data vs mobile peak; and the Y of convergence

Yochai Benkler in his book the Wealth of networks argues

Today we live in a networked society. Digital information technology, the economics of networked information production and the social practices of networked conversations, qualitatively change the role that individuals can play in cultural and knowledge production and dissemination. Communities are sticky in ways that mass media never was, it requires a very different approach to what we create, how we create it and how we market it.

Enabled by technological change, we are beginning to see a series of economic, social, and cultural adaptations that make possible a radical transformation of how we make the information environment we occupy as autonomous individuals, citizens, and members of cultural and social groups. It seems passe´ today to speak of “the Internet revolution.” In some academic circles, it is positively naïve. But it should not be. The change brought about by the networked information environment is deep. It is structural. It goes to the very foundations of how liberal markets and liberal democracies have coevolved for almost two centuries.