Born Digital, understanding the first generation of digital natives, was written by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. It was published by Basic books, a member of the Perseus Books group. It was published in the year 2008. It contains 375 pages in total. It explores about the consequences of the extensive availability of the internet connectivity to the present first generation people who are born to it. It studies how information is stored and used in this digital age. The authors act as envoys between the digital generation and the past generation by addressing issues that worry the parents and educators.
They refer to this current generation as ‘Digital natives’. He refers to those born from the year 1980 when the social digital technologies came into being. They all have the skills to use those technologies, or at one, point they will learn. They also mentioned common examples of diverse technologies that current kids use like cell phones, sidekicks and even iPhones. That this is the most rapid period that the technology transforms and greatly affects the generation. They offer a sociological image of this current generation. They seem even to the older generation extraordinarily sophisticated
And also strangely narrow. They focus on a range of issues covering from the highly philosophical to practical issues.
This book is one of the most important books of policy. It explains and educates on how to understand and mentor the children of the digital era. Every chapter in the book basically addresses some the parental concerns that arise with the digital technology. The issues addressed involve the shifts in the concept of privacy, identity, and even content creation. All the answers are present in this book. Palfrey and Gasser document in this book the various ways of downloading, online-games playing and text-messaging that almost every digital native is involved. They are, therefore, transforming the society.
According to Palfrey and Gasser, they find youthful people to fail to realize the vulnerability of their own information that the internet posts are never private. They go ahead to suggest a very tactful school and parental oversight. They find to be a serious problem that the U.S have failed to regulate the information mining by the search engines present in the internet to regulate good and bad information to be visible anyhow. This information even has the capacity to generate cradle to grave report on an individual that for instance include medical and various financial records. They go ahead to compare the U.S system with the Europe’s policies in which they have put in place more effective information and data protection.
The parents are well by far going to benefit from this book as well as educators. They benefit from their discussion of issues like content control, the safety and the illegal forms of file sharing. With close attention to those three factors, Palfrey and Gasser see a great bright future for the internet that should always offer all global citizens the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. It will also offer global caring for the society at large.
They also point out that the hard problem is always how to balance ‘caution with encouragement’. This only means how present people take the effective steps to protect this present generation while at the same time allowing them some space to figure things out by themselves.
They argue that the best solution is education. Palfrey and Gasser want the educators, parents and the lawmakers specifically to engage this generation on dialogue instead of them leaving it to manage for itself. They state that the traditional values and the common senses that have served the past generations very well will be important in this very new different world of today. They also do not rule out any new methods that include social norms, government action, technical controls and industry self-regulation.
They touch on online piracy concerns in which never before have a lot of information about the average people been so easily accessible to many, especially to the current kids. They explain that despite the growing amount of information present online about the kids, is not to avoid the networked publics. Instead it comes up with nuanced ways to navigate the internet. The parents have roles to play in that they should encourage these kids to guard their information and identifies always. That they need to use common sense before they share any important information online.
They also advocate the very same reasoned way of approach when it comes to the online child safety. The safety risks have always been greatly misunderstood by the policy makers and parents. They point out that online problems like cyberbullying are nothing but old problems playing on a new platform. The most sensible responses to that are involved parenting and honest and open conversations. To add to that, peers intervention strategies may also be part of the solution they say. Industry self-regulation can also help by far.
When it comes to fighting piracy, Palfrey and Gasser see the government play less action. They see creativity be the positive side of this generation but law-breaking is the downside. This means that as the digital natives are highly creative at most things, they also break the copyright laws at a regular basis. The point out that the only way to stop piracy, is for the ethical issues to be upgraded. That the costumers should pay for original things not pirated things from the street. This safeguards the creativity and talent’s value.
They continue to stress that education to encourage the youths to obey the law should be highly recommended. Even so, ways to punish those who will still break the law should be searched for and installed.
On matters pertains the internet’s impact on culture and learning, they really show their worry as the youths are now glued to the habit of cut and paste. This is so because of the gratification provided by the Wikipedia, Google searches, blogs and even the instant messaging. They also underscore on the methods that this generation are sophisticated with in finding and gathering information and at all times are learning sophisticated ways the skills of processing information. They also wonder on the ways they share information with their peers in ways unimaginable just a few generations ago.
It will very interesting to see how these changes impact this generation when they grow older and become adults and one day they become parents to others.
Conclusion
Born digital is very essential for parents, the educators and even the confused adults that seek to understand the digital generation kids. This book offers a guideline on how to solve those issues arising and affecting the current age. It offers some brave enlightenment to the parents and as even the old.
Institutions collapse, there is definitely a need for just this sort of enlightenment and positive guide to the digital reality. This book explores every inch of it. It explains in a very good manner that education on any matter is very important
The fine well explained early history of the current generation was very vital and served as an important starting point for any of the conversations on how to mentor this web generation. The book does not just cover one specific issue; it tries to cover a broad spectrum of the subject matter. That is very commendable.
