Also reviewed here: Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Basic, 375 pages, $27.95
What's going on with the kids? Are they really as vulnerable to online sex fiends, violent role playing games, and Internet porn as hysterical media reports suggest? Are the latest generations really attention deficit zombies addicted to nonsensical IM chatter, unfit to do anything but ; ) and LOL?
Two new books try to answer these questions and paint a picture of the digital youth. The authors of Born Digital are Harvard law chums John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (who also teaches in Switzerland). They survey the terrain, coin a few largely irrelevant catch phrases, and exit smugly, assuring themselves in a concluding, supposedly spontaneous, e-mail exchange that they've opened the door for dialogue and understanding.
Meanwhile, long-time tech prognosticator Don Tapscott brings us Grown Up Digital. In it, he surveys the terrain and provides point-form instructions on how educators, employers, parents and governments might successfully interact with the Net Generation. His is the better, more focused book.
Still, neither book quite manages to convince me that the "Digital Natives" or "Net Generation" are particularly unique and likely to change the world. True, they're adeptly utilizing the opportunities that have emerged for them, but so are many other people of varying ages. And, as with everyone navigating the digital age, it remains to be seen if the technology is shaping the "Net Generation," or they are shaping the technology.
In Born Digital, we never really find out much about the lives of this "first generation of Digital Natives." That's because this book is really a boilerplate survey of issues germane to the Internet age. Though the authors repeatedly allude to focus groups and research, and even claim to have spoken to "hundreds of parents and teachers," quotes from young people about what they do and why they do what they do probably occupy about three pages total. There is no indication that the writers went to the homes, schools and (cyber) hangouts of the generation they are purporting to write about.
Instead of evidence and firsthand observation, we're offered platitudes: "Very often Digital Natives have better computer skills than their parents, and this means they can be more helpful in keeping computers safe from harmful images than parents and teachers can." Not only does this sentence make no sense, it is accompanied by nothing in the way of substantiation, whether anecdotal or anthropological.
The law professors are on firmer ground when writing about legal issues such as copyright and some aspects of privacy, but overall this book offers scant insight into the minds of a generation of text-messagers and MySpacers.
Tapscott's Grown Up Digital - follow up to his mid-'90s tome Growing Up Digital - is, by contrast, a book far more grounded in actual firsthand research. So what does Tapscott conclude about the Net Generations? They are a generation of quick thinking, tech savvy "prosumers" unafraid of hard work (provided they can work collaboratively and creatively). They are a generation that demands honesty and transparency from their governments and corporations. They are socially engaged, activist minded, and have been working for change almost as soon as they learned to type. They are so talented and forward thinking that they are surely going to change the world for the better, and those not on the Net Generation bandwagon had better figure out a way to get on before they get left behind. "The bottom line is this: if you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future. You will also understand how our institutions and society need to change today."
If all this sounds a bit over the top, well, it is. I don't think I've ever read a more positive book. Tapscott can see only good in the generation of teens and 20-somethings that he's sure will soon take over the world. He dismisses the idea that they are narcissistic, poo-poohs any notion they are spending so much time online that they have disconnected from the real world. He even defends the fact that the Net Generations are considerably less likely to read books.
For Tapscott, this is a generation that can do no wrong. Among their gifts to us is a "new communication standard" in the form of a "permanent searchable record" of what politicians say and stand for. An example: a YouTube video called "John McCain versus John McCain" in which the Senator is shown to continually contradict himself. I've seen that video and to me it's representative of the problems of the digital age - out of context sound bites that can make anyone say anything.
Tapscott admits that the video isn't fair to McCain, but declines to enter into a debate about the implications of video vigilante activism. "Viewers are watching," he tells us, as if the mere fact that a political dialogue of any sort is taking place online should be enough.
In another part of the book, Tapscott talks about the way Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton used the instant message disseminator Twitter during the primaries. While Clinton only recruited followers, Obama went a step further and signed on to follow the messages of anyone who signed up to follow him.
For Tapscott, this is indicative of how the Net Generations respond with loyalty to those who give them legitimate access. But, again, a more nuanced discussion is possible. Did Obama really read the messages sent to him by his thousands of followers? Of course not. He probably wasn't even sending the messages ascribed to his name. So is this real input and interactivity or is this pseudo-interactive digital marketing, the kind of thing a brilliant generation that refuses to be lied to should be rejecting?
Throughout the book, Tapscott heaps praise on institutions and companies that give the Internet hordes opportunities to interact and respond. (Example: CompUSA was smart to put a customer-rating system on its website; shoppers who came to the site from review-related searches bought 50 per cent more stuff than other online shoppers.)
But it's also possible to argue that these companies/institutions and even politicians might be taking advantage of the willingness of the Net Generations to live online. They provide free marketing, creative services and feedback, and the giant corporations take their opinions, customized designs and videos and use them to sell more stuff. I don't call that interactivity. I call that being suckered.
After 350 pages of unmitigated praise for the denizens of the Internet, I'm in awe of Tapscott's enthusiasm. His book is a great starting point for any number of conversations about what people are doing online. But I'm far from convinced.
So far, at least five books have been written laying claim to this emerging generation. The books variously proclaim that this particular demographic is the smartest, dumbest, and most self obsessed demographic ever. This says more about the uncertainty we share regarding the future of humanity than it does about the "digital natives."
If global warming is taken seriously and we end up cleaning up the planet, we'll probably look back and say Tapscott was right. If consumerism in the name of connectivity continues as a primary obsession and we run out of drinking water around the time the offspring of the Digital Natives birth their own baby Blackberries and iPhones, then it's probable that we won't be so fond of those little whippersnappers and their sleek little iPods.
I read these two books with the sense not so much of some grand rift between generations, but of the deepening of the ongoing social experiment known as mass media. Someone once wrote that the medium is the message and I'd argue that, in many fundamental ways the medium - the screen - remains the same. The great 20th century experiment of mass media has expanded its reach and scope, but that hasn't changed the facts on the ground: We are a society of strangers staring at flickering screens. As such, we're anxious for someone to explain not how different we are from each other, but what we're all so busy looking at - together and separate, lonely and connected.
Hal Niedzviecki's new book The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning To Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbours, will be published in May 2009 by City Lights Books.