Why Dichotomies Fail
June 13th, 2006 by Christopher HarrisAs an American Studies major in college (with a minor in History), I spent a great deal of time focusing on Victorian America between the end of the Civil War and the start of WWI. It is a fascinating time; the age of Twain, Whitman, London and more. It was also a time of great technological changes rivaling the current surge we are experiencing. In these short years the world went from lining up on two sides of a field at Gettysburg to the machine guns, mustard gas, airplanes and tanks of the Great War. The telegraph (1838) was quickly upgraded to the telephone (1876) with transcontinental phone calls soon after (1915). And remember…all of this was happening in a period of about 60 years (1865-1915).
As might be expected, some people had a difficult time adjusting to the new situation. Not only were they being challenged by new technologies, but also radically different social and cultural notions. Women voting? Helping the poor? Teaching children? How scandalous! In short, a great number of people suffered some serious intellectual upheavals. In many cases, their response was to develop psychosomatic illnesses. They became bedridden by the physical manifestations of their inability to deal with change. Their world was brought down, in no small part, by one thing – dichotomies.
When one views a situation through the lens of a dichotomy, there is a great deal of risk involved. In any situation with two mutually exclusive, polarized possibilities and no central ground you are either right or wrong. And if you are wrong…you are totally, completely, earth-shattering, world-ending, no chance of recovery wrong. That level of wrongness tends to make people a bit uncomfortable.
So why the history lesson? Well, it is my long-winded and round about way of getting to the point (again) that I am uncomfortable with Marc Prensky’s discussion of digital natives and digital immigrants. Prensky wrote a post yesterday attempting to clarify the source of the digital native/immigrant. No matter the source, I think the concept is leading us towards the same sort of intellectual crisis experienced by our American Victorians. That is why I prefer to open my presentations with a discussion of Knowing/Participating/Living which provides additional grey area and allows for transition between the levels as well as identification of a level for each new technology/idea encountered. I may be living blogging, but I am only participating in IM. Instead of presenting a black and white dichotomy that applies a global label, this allows one to find a comfortable level for specific concepts.
I also bring this up because of a new technology that is going to change some things. You may have seen the stories bouncing around about the new ringtone that is pretty much impossible for most people over the age of 30 to hear. Go ahead and give it a listen. The ringtone is actually based on an idea for a “young adult deterrent” by BBC a few months ago. Find a tone that is audible to young ears but inaudible to most older ears and you can use it to drive away “undesirables.” The problem now is that those miscreant youth learned from this and turned the tone that is inaudible to most of their teachers into a cell phone ringtone. There is a great blog post with samples of tones from 10,000 Hz to 25,000 Hz so you can test your range.
So what does this mean? If you can hear it then you are a digital native? And if you can’t, you are a digital immigrant? I can hear the ringtone, but for how much longer? Checking my range, I find that I can just barely hear 17,000 Hz and nothing past that. The ringtone sounds like it is around 15,000 Hz. So what happens to me when I can’t hear the ringtone? In the same light, what happens to today’s digital natives five to ten years from now when everything has changed? Not only technological changes, but physiological changes. When our young digital natives can no longer hear their own ringtones are they now immigrants? American intellectuals of the Victorian Age were crushed by the ending of dichotomies. How will we respond?
June 13th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Chris,
A bit off topic, but if you have not read Standage’s The Victorian Internet about the impact of the telegraph on society, you’re in for a treat.
Enjoying your discussion about digital immigrants/natives. I see plenty of adults who make more productive (if not comfortable) use of technology than kids – primarily because they have more mature goals/aims/plans etc. While the terms are clever, I am not sure they are meaningful.
All the best,
Doug
June 13th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Doug, Thanks for the book recomendation. Sounds fascinating! That was such an amazing period of cultural and technological change – from horses to airplanes (and, sadly muskets to mustard gas) in a single lifetime!
I like how you put that – “mature goals/aims/plans.” This reminds me of an experience I had this past weekend. I play an online game called America’s Army and this weekend was facing off against the 8 year old son of one of our groups members. He was trouncing me on of the the maps that called for quick reaction time. We couldn’t play my favorite map which is more tactics and aiming skill based, though, because he didn’t know how to navigate through the Windows explorer file system to rename a file that his father had changed to recover the bridge map. Is he a native because his faster reaction time and better eye-hand coordination let me beat me? Or do we have to recognize that though he was excelling in the game environment, he had no clue how to navigate the file structure and perform basic file management tasks that would let him play on the other map. Is having the seemingly inate ability to grasp technology notable if there is a lack of knowledge and skills to accomplish what we would consider basic tasks required to attain a desired goal?
Digital natives…sounds primative in that context, doesn’t it?
June 15th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Wow, great points to think about here Chris! A friend’s 5 year old was (still is) scarily adept at completing many “complicated” games like Neverwinter Nights – because he had learned the responses he needed to make and had amazingly quick response times. And yet he couldn’t read, and so missed the basic plot and any cultural and linguistic references, so the game was reduced to just “killing bad guys”, “staying alive” and getting through levels for him. It’s quite amusing for me now when I sit with him and watch him play any games and attempt to explain what things are or what they signify, which to me adds to the game, but to him are still unfamiliar and incomprehensible. Reflexes aren’t everything!
(And sadly I can’t hear that ring tone – as an over-the-hill 35 year old…)
June 15th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
Thanks for sharing, CW. I also enjoy Neverwinter Nights, but cannot imagine interacting with it on a non-literate level. The richness of the storylines is the beauty of the game. Though I do know that after the first time through a level, I do tend to skip most of the text interactions by pressing “1″ all the way through.