Are you a Digital "Native" or "Immigrant"?

[The Last Conformist]

I think a more meaningful discussion would be between residents and visitors.

 

[Rambuchan]

I transcripted the first part of the article.

Thanks a lot! I wish I had that kit. Would've saved me a lot of bother and been easier reading for others.

Not mine, but then I hardly ever bothered to view adverts. I used to be offended by eyesore banners when I was younger, and on Firefox/Kazehakase I group-block offensive advertising.
The advertising shift is the greatest change to advertisers, really. There's plenty of free webspace that's ever-growing, so you see websites saying "Your Ad Here" fairly often, or at least I do. One of them has it permanently.

I used to make the motion picture variety and worked in that field for a while. So I've got a passing interest from the makers' side of the fence if you like. I'm actually no fan of advertising, despite this, but it's a necessary feature of "the way things are" right now.

What encourages me is that the more personalised and bespoke our media becomes, thanks to this greater shift to the net and new technology, the less irritating adverts should become. We're getting to a stage where we decide what adverts we want to see and when, if at all. That's bloody good news for consumers. This is all aside from Saatchi's comments that advertisers need to think of new ways of getting consumers to respond. That's something else altogether and it's causing the industry trouble.

-1 point for poor Star Trek referencing ('where no generation has gone before')
-2 points for continued misunderstanding of "evolution"
+2 points for "digital universe", signifying its relative independence
+1 point for the protagonist being connected to lots of people
-1 point for obsession with mobile phones
+2 for depicting an older woman working happily with computers
-1 for "this has been happening for a while and is only now becoming clear"
+1 for use of "doyen"
+2 for mentioning rewiring of the brain based on input (one of my pet study fields)
+1 for saying that it isn't necessarily dystopian
+1 for netiquette
-1 for suggesting that verbal will make visual seem cumbersome
-2 for 'English with simpler spelling'
+1 for noting that websites can very quickly be judged
+1 for "wikithinking"
-1 for MySpace
+1 for the name "TheFishCanSing"
+1 for the prelude to cyborgs
+1 for "grand-scale experiment"
-1 for "no firm evidence of what will happen to them"
Overall score 5 out of 25 points given.

There, that's my comment on the article.

A great review format there. I like it. Some questions for you and / or any other "natives":

~ What's the beef with mobiles?
~ Can you expand on "the prelude to cyborgs" please?
~ What did the article get wrong / miss out when dealing with "rewiring of the brain"?
~ Your opinion of "verbal will make visual cumbersome" is negative, but why?

 

[Erik Mesoy]

Regarding advertising, I rather like Google's text-only ads, which I can read almost subconsciously. They also get more than one word to express themselves, and they're related to what I'm reading.

A great review format there. I like it. Some questions for you and / or any other "natives":

~ What's the beef with mobiles?

A personal one; I'm expected to always have it on and always be accessible; this is the more specific form of a general demand that I be available to others on their terms and I hate it.

~ Your opinion of "verbal will make visual cumbersome" is negative, but why?

Again; personal. TLC pointed out most of the reasons, so I'll sum up: In a book I can quickly leaf back and forth through large amounts of info, there is no loading time, I can read in exactly the order I prefer, and at the speed I want, not to mention that letters are standardized far more than dialects.

~ Can you expand on "the prelude to cyborgs" please?
~ What did the article get wrong / miss out when dealing with "rewiring of the brain"?

Spoilered relevant bit of article:

Spoiler :

- innovation is happening at such a pace that what was science fiction a few years ago is looming as fact. In experiments, human brain cells, for example, have already been linked directly to computers.
Andy Clark, a former director of cognitive science at Indiana University, believes we should already regard ourselves as cyborgs. Our thinking no longer goes on purely inside our heads, he contends, it is intimately bound up with the tools we use. He illustrates this with the example of people using software to trawl the web for news, music, information and goods personalised to their tastes. Where do the "thinking" and analysis stop?

I've been interested in grafts and rewiring since this, and cyborgs came into focus for me when I saw how simply (not easily) they could be made.
Yes, computers are becoming, in one sense, more than tools as our brains adapt to them. Case in point: After spending a year playing Diablo 2 with the minimap on, I felt partially "blinded" when I turned it off. My brain was used to that source of input and was surprised when associated game pathways were triggered and no input was received on that channel.
"Full" cyborgs would have to be grown like test tube babies in an artificial womb, with constant additional of machine grafts. But technically anyone with an implant is a cyborg. Between these extremes, you can give someone a mechanical eye without having to do much adjustment: Put camera in eye socket, connect I/O port to optic nerve, send signals, the brain will eventually sort them out and grow a new cortex region (or adapt an unused one) to deal with the input. The brain will do a lot of calibrating that way if you give it a few months. You could potentially add lots of stuff this way, for example a memory chip.

I'm a bit doubtful of Andy Clark's use of "already", since we're not continually hooked up to our computers. Professional birdwatchers use binoculars several hours a day; that's an information filter; I wouldn't say that those lenses make us cyborgs.

And a warning to those who want to save themselves effort by installing calculators to avoid arithemetic: It won't work. You'll have to practise a lot in order to get the interface working. I practise a lot of mathematics, and I can multiply any pair of numbers <20 in my head in three seconds flat. I can multiply three-digit numbers in my head given some time. Your brain is as good as a computer at arithmetic; you just aren't associating quickly.

 

[Elrohir]

~ The claim that kids today find watching TV and reading a book "boring". Do you think so also? I'm bored by TV these days, but not with reading a book.

That's not me at all. I find some TV interesting, (Mostly Sci-Fi, news and History channels) and I read a great deal just for fun, everything from Plato to LOTR. So I guess that makes me an immigrant?

 

[The Last Conformist]

I'm a bit doubtful of Andy Clark's use of "already", since we're not continually hooked up to our computers. Professional birdwatchers use binoculars several hours a day; that's an information filter; I wouldn't say that those lenses make us cyborgs.

People with contact lenses use them even more, and are arguably "hooked up" to them (the cornea is technically a part of the brain). But the reason that binoculars or contact lenses, or for that matter titanium hip joints, don't qualify you for cyborghood presumably has less to do with information filtering or hooked-upness than witht he fact they don't contain cybernetic stuff. Well, some binoculars do, but hardly the ones used by most ornithologists.

 

[GinandTonic]

Native. Remember the first steps away from Lave, wobbling like a fledgling from the nest all the way to New Eden

 

[The Last Conformist]

Native. Remember the first steps away from Lave, wobbling like a fledgling from the nest all the way to New Eden

You just earned yourself an incorrible geek point.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

But the reason that binoculars or contact lenses, or for that matter titanium hip joints, don't qualify you for cyborghood presumably has less to do with information filtering or hooked-upness than witht he fact they don't contain cybernetic stuff.

D'oh.

Here I was thinking of binoculars over contact lenses mostly because they're more complex tools.

But what exactly is the definition of "cybernetic"? I found the following definition:
of or relating the principles of cybernetics; "cybernetic research"
While "cybernetics" is defined as follows:
The theoretical study of communication and control processes in biological, mechanical, and electronic systems, especially the comparison of these processes in biological and artificial systems.

Looks like there's been some drift from the original meaning of the word into sci-fi here.

 

[Masquerouge]

~ The claim that kids today find watching TV and reading a book "boring". Do you think so also? I'm bored by TV these days, but not with reading a book.

Same here. Actually, I'm bored by the amount of commercials on TV, but I love to watch good series on DVD. I bet if books had commercials I'd stop reading them too.

~ Saatchi's comments about how our changed thinking and responsiveness has meant the death knell for traditional advertising. Do you have any observations to share here? I'll happily bang on till the cows come home.

Funny because I made my first comment without looking at this point Yeah, traditional advertising is doomed. It only survives because the migrants still outnumber the natives.

~ The different professorial views about the claimed "decreased attention span" of modern net users. Some interesting angles on what using this technology is doing to our ways of thinking.

This carries a negative connotation that I strongly dislike. It sounds like the old granddad complaining that in his time, all you had to play with was sticks and stones, and you had hours of fun, but the spoiled brats of today just don't know how to have fun anymore with all them fancy toys.

~ The pessimistic view of how language will develop.

This again seems suspiciously like a "It was better before" myth.

But great article

 

[GinandTonic]

Increased information flow must be good for language in the short to medium term. The incresed and accelerated informational flow between cultures allows for defusion of words. And words influence the concepts they express. Its what the english language is best at.

The only possible problem is a hetrogoney, a lack of isolated environments for (sub)cultures to florish away from a domminant culture.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

The only possible problem is a hetrogoney, a lack of isolated environments for (sub)cultures to florish away from a domminant culture.

Lots of internet subcultures flourish by themselves, because outsiders don't care to upset them. For example, the Audio Asylum. Internet environments are perfectly isolated in their natural state; they only stop being isolated as new members are invited. There are plenty of sites that will host free forums for you, too.

I don't see the problem.

 

[GinandTonic]

Personally im not so worried either. Bring on the highbred viger I say.

 

[The Last Conformist]

But what exactly is the definition of "cybernetic"? I found the following definition:
of or relating the principles of cybernetics; "cybernetic research"
While "cybernetics" is defined as follows:
The theoretical study of communication and control processes in biological, mechanical, and electronic systems, especially the comparison of these processes in biological and artificial systems.

Looks like there's been some drift from the original meaning of the word into sci-fi here.

That's pretty much what my encyclopaedia gives as Wiener's original 1948 definition of the term. It was used in sci-fi before this?

Ironically, today the word comes up often enough in sci-fi, but not once in any of my courses in communications and systems control. The cyborgs of the future won't know what the "cyb-" means unless they happen to be into sci-fi.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

That's pretty much what my encyclopaedia gives as Wiener's original 1948 definition of the term. It was used in sci-fi before this?

Other way around: The term doesn't seem to mean that anymore; it's apparently drifted from the cited one towards sci-fi in normal usage.

No idea when it started being used in sci-fi.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

I was ten-years-old (christmas 1980) when I got and learned to program our family's TI99-4A personal computer (the all-family christmas gift cost $499+tax on sale). Having had a life before computers (they honestly weren't that widespread in the seventies) would make me in immigrant, but I think of myself more as an early colonist. I grew up fiddling with radios and other homemade electronic devices long before that Texas Instruments PC. My "Computer Age" is 26 years old this christmas.

Because it's 10 years shorter than my real age, I have to be an immigrant.

 

[skadistic]

What about digital slave? I was dragged kicking and screaming with cell phones and surfing except video games.

 

[Tomoyo]

I'm an immigrant. I definitely remember the days before I was so addicted to technology. I remember when I was read lots of books for fun. I remember when my favourite thing to do was play dodgeball. I remember when I would play board games almost every afternoon with my friends. I remember when we would create "clubs" with rankings, points, and all that stuff.

It all changed when I moved away. I've been immersing myself in internet contacts and games since then.

 

[Willowmound]

I'm not an immigrant. I'm 29 however, which means I well remember a time when computers weren't common (I didn't have one till I was nine). So while maybe not a native, at least I'm one of the original settlers. (Though not one of the pioneers, they were on the WELL in the 80s and on the inter-university 'ARPANET' even earlier.)

So I voted 'native'.

 

[punkbass2000]

Definitely native. My parents both received CS degrees in the '70s before I was born and I grew up with computers. However, it sounds as though I'm not nearly as immersed in this "digital universe" as many others. I don't have a cellphone and nor do I want one and my social life is primarily in real life. To me, anyway, the internet is what I do waste time.

 

[GinandTonic]

No mobile? Wow, didnt think there was a person under 50 without one. Why this neo-luditeism? Dont your friends and family berate you?

Now mobiles changed the world as much as the internet. For anyone who doesnt work at a desk its just inconcievable. I hardly ever have firm plans any more, less meet at this location at this time and you have to be there, more a drink in this neighbourhood around this time. Everything from social to many elements of biz is so much more fluid.