Meredith+Wiese

Week 1 Discussion: “Will there always be ‘Digital Natives’ and ‘Digital Immigrants’?”

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants exist because of the high-speed evolution of technology. As I see it, the evolution of technology will continue indefinitely, therefore there will always be Digital Natives and Immigrants.

In Mark Prensky’s article, he describes Digital Immigrants as doing things such as printing a document out to edit rather than editing on the screen. In the future, the Digital Immigrant may do something such as edit a document on the computer screen, rather than speaking the edits into a microphone or using some other new technology to make edits. Who knows where the advances will be at that time, but when there are new advances, they will create Digital Immigrants.

The Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives of today, compared to those in the past and future may be completely different, but they will still exist throughout time.

Samantha Gash: I agree with you that there will always be digital immigrants and digital natives. With the rapid evolution of technology, there will always be people without the means necessary to get the new technology, so they will always be behind. Like I said in my post, digital immigrants will always exist because not every person will not be able to afford new technology.