Review: Digital Natives & Digital Immigrants

5 Star, Information Society

Digital NativesEarly Insights into the Future, May 24, 2008

Johann Günther

It's a pity this work is not more readily available. The best work right now that is available is Marc Pensky's Don't Bother Me Mom–I'm Learning!, whose 2005 article in Educational Review (December 2005/January 2006) on “Listening to the Natives,” first illuminated this huge distinction. As Pensky says, children today are no longer “little versions of us.”

Forthcoming in August 2008 is Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. The key point that I have seen in my broad reading is that the future is not here now–it will be here when the digital natives are digital adults, and overthrow the “command and control” (“do it because I say so”) regimes that are all too prone to corruption and misdirection behind closed doors.

See also:
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Whole Earth Review Archives on Public Intelligence (Historical)

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1992

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Whole Earth R Brand Army Green

1992

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Whole Earth R Kapor et al We Need a National Public Network

1992

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Whole Earth R Kleiner The Co-Evolution of Governance

1992

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Whole Earth R Petersen Will the Military Miss the Market

1992

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Whole Earth R Staple & Dixon Telegeography: Mapping the New World Order

1992

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Whole Earth R Steele E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, and Intelligence

1992

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Whole Earth R Tibbs Industrial Ecology: An Environmental Agenda for Industry

1991

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Whole Earth R Brilliant Computer Conferencing: The Global Connection

1991

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Whole Earth R Clay Genes, Genius, and Genocide

1991

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Whole Earth R Elgin Conscious Democracy Through Electronic Town Meetings

1991

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Whole Earth R Garcia Assessing the Impacts of Technology

1991

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Whole Earth R Godwin The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Virtual Communities

1991

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Whole Earth R Karraker Highways of the Mind

1991

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Whole Earth R Lovins & Lovins Winning the Peace

1991

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Whole Earth R Marx Privacy & Technology

1991

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Whole Earth R Meeks The Global Commons

1991

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Whole Earth R Rheingold Electronic Democracy: The Great Equalizer

1991

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Whole Earth R Schuman Reclaiming our Technological Future

1991

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Whole Earth R Warren & Rheingold Access to Political Tools: Effective Citizen Action

1991

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Whole Earth R White Earthtrust: Electronic Mail and Ecological Activism

1991

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Whole Earth R Whitney-Smith Information Doesn't Want

1991

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Whole Earth R Wittig Electronic City Hall

1990

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Whole Earth R Barlow Crime and Puzzlement: The Advance of the Law on the Electronic Frontier

1990

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Whole Earth R Brand Outlaws, Musicians, Lovers, and Spies: The Future of Control

1990

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Whole Earth R Dodge Life Work

1990

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Whole Earth R Ishii Cross-Cultural Communications & Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

1990

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Whole Earth R Jordon III Restoration: Shaping the Land, Transforming the Spirit

1990

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Whole Earth R Kumon Toward Co-Emulation: Japan and the United States in the Information Age

1990

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Whole Earth R Monschke How to Heal the Land

1990

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Whole Earth R Shapard Observations on Cross-Cultural Electronic Networking

1990

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Whole Earth R Vidal Founding Father Knows Best

1989

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Whole Earth R Berman The Gesture of Balance

1989

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Whole Earth R Garfinkle Social Security Numbers: And Other Telling Information

1989

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Whole Earth R Haight Living in the Office

1989

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Whole Earth R Horvitz The USENET Underground

1989

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Whole Earth R Jaffe Hello, Central: Phone Conferencing Tips

1989

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Whole Earth R Johnson` The Portable Office

1989

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Whole Earth R Rheingold Ethnobotany: The Search for Vanishing Knowledge

1988

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Whole Earth R Baker, S. Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Baker, W. Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Brand The Information Wants to Be Free Strategy

1988

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Whole Earth R Coate Tales from Two Communities: The Well and the Farm

1988

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Whole Earth R Ferguson Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Fields Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Hardin Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Hawkins Computer Parasites & Remedies–A Catalog of First Sightings

1988

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Whole Earth R Keen Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Kleiner Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Leary Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Nelson Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Newroe Distance Learning

1988

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Whole Earth R Pert The Material Basis of Emotions with Inset, Mind as Information

1988

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Whole Earth R Rappaport Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Thurow & Walsh Getting Over the Information Economy

1987

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Whole Earth R Donaldson An Incomplete History of Microcomputing

1987

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Whole Earth R Henson MEMETICS: The Science of Information Viruses

1987

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Whole Earth R Horvitz An Intelligent Guide to Intelligence

1987

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Whole Earth R Krause Bio-Acoustics: Habitat Ambience & Ecological Balance

1987

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Whole Earth R Roberts Electronic Cottage on Wheels

1986

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Whole Earth R Fend & Gunther What Have You Got to Hide: Iraq Iran Basra Abadan

1986

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Whole Earth R Minsky Society of Mind

1986

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Whole Earth R Sanders Etiquette for the Age of Transparency

1986

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Whole Earth R Scxhwartz & Brand The World Information Economy

1986

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Whole Earth R Thompson A Gaian Politics

1985

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Whole Earth R Brand, Kelly, Kinney Digital Retouching: The End of Photography as Evidence of Anything

1985

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Whole Earth R Hunter Public Image

1985

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Whole Earth R Kleiner The Health Hazards of Computers: A Guide to Worrying Intelligently

1985

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Whole Earth R Mander Six Grave Doubts About Computers

1983

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Whole Earth R Illich Silence is a Commons: Computers Are Doing to Communication What …

1982

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Whole Earth R Brand Uncommon Courtesy: A School of Compassionate Skills

1982

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Whole Earth R Kayes Force Without Power: A Doctrine of Unarmed Military Service

1982

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Whole Earth R Meadows Whole Earth Models & Systems