Articles
Culture Gap: Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants
Large corporates need to contend with a new generation of technically digital natives who are used to crossing boundaries, openness and bringing in and adapting to technological innovation at the drop of a hat. This is already bringing new risks and putting strains in the the areas of corporate governance, risk reduction, staff acquisition and retention, and other areas of corporate policy.
On the plus side, this new mindset could augur a new era of better adaptability and accommodation when it comes to taking on innovative technologies from small companies, and another future point of pressure for relaxing corporate procurement and due diligence policies to better accommodate the innovation they so urgently need.
For a view on the technological divide between young and old, and how the old are having to adapt, see this light-hearted but thoughtful piece from self-confessed fiftysomething technophobe Jamie Warde-Aldam .....
Try, if you will, to think of all the things regarded as 'cutting-edge technology' in this dawn of a new century: wireless networks, on-demand music and video entertainment, live television over the internet, advanced touch-screens - all based on older technology and all set to become ubiquitous in the next decade.
Our children are growing up in this world; to them these things are already as normal as electric toasters and microwave meals.
We are experiencing a new kind of generation gap. Like the hedonistic flower children of the 60s, and the militant punks of the 70s, youngsters born in the mid-80s and 90s are expressing themselves in a way that is almost unfathomable to their parents.
This gap could run far deeper than the mere ideological differences between baby boomers, Generation X-ers and Generation Ys. Some studies are starting to show that people born in the digital age might have completely different thinking patterns to those born outside it, to the extent that their brain structures may be physically diverging.
Mark Prensky, an internationally recognised designer in education and learning, claims to have coined the term 'digital native', in contrast to 'digital immigrant'. Digital natives, Prensky argues, are fluent native speakers of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet.
Digital immigrants, meanwhile, may try to adapt to this new environment but they always retain, to varying degrees, what Prensky says is an "accent" - a throwback to their non-digital past.
This distinction can be seen in behaviour like editing a document in hard copy rather than on-screen, or going out to buy a CD rather than downloading it first.
It's probably unfair to say that all adults are digital immigrants (although I certainly count myself as a member) but teenagers and young people are far more likely to be digital natives.
A recent US survey (the Pew Internet & American Life Project of January 2008) found an estimated 64% of 12 to 17-year-olds have created some form of online content. Around 28% of teens have created a blog compared to only 8% of adults. And while over a quarter of teens (27%) have created or worked on their own web pages, less than one in six adult users were able to overcome their antipathy to doing so.
Over half (55%) of teenagers have an online profile on a social network, such as Facebook or MySpace. This contrasts with only 20% of adult users.
On top of all that, Prensky estimates that an average 21-year-old about to enter the workforce will have, in their life so far, played 5,000 hours of video games, exchanged 250,000 emails, instant messages and text messages, made 10,000 hours of mobile phone calls, and spent 3,500 hours online.
Young digital natives entering a workplace today are finding themselves under the tutelage and control of people from an older generation, who simply do not share the same digital upbringing.
The divide between the two is already causing conflict and some organisations are having to revise their codes of conduct and internal rules to compensate. For many employers this is a bewildering role reversal: once upon a time, the young whippersnappers were the ones who had to shape up and fit in, now it's the company that also has to change to accommodate new recruits.
For instance, natives are used to existing in a world where they are continuously plugged into multiple information sources. They are used to working piecemeal as they quickly switch between tasks. Workplaces are having to adapt the way they outline tasks and the processes by which they expect them to be done.
Natives' predilection for video games also engenders a different attitude to work. Morale is of far more importance to them, which heightens their desire to be valued for completing tasks rather than being rated on other measures of work, like how many hours they put in every week.
Today's young people have developed in a fully networked world, an arena almost without boundaries. They live an existence that encourages experimentation and allows them to comment or edit with freedom. The line between user and creator is becoming blurred.
A joint research project into the digital native phenomenon being undertaken by several academic bodies, including Harvard Law School, has found that natives see information as entirely malleable. User-generated content is now the norm on the internet, and perceived limits (the limits established by the older generation) are continuously being pushed further and further back.
Our very existence as human beings is undergoing a metamorphosis and unless we all keep up, we might just become two very different species.
[This article first appeared in the Erudine Engine Magazine, Autumn 2008]
