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April 16, 2006

Natives & immigrants in a changing world

My how the times have changed... I was just reflecting over Easter breakfast with my family and friends about new technologies. My mother recently purchased the MacBook Pro with an Intel chip inside, and though she's the least tech-savvy in the family, she arguably has the best machine.

One of the features she wasn't quite sure she would use is the built in webcam. As I listened to her chatting about it, I was struck that her idea of how to make use of it was vastly different from my own. This is because, as someone recently informed me, I am a native to technology and she is an immigrant. There's an interesting article about this native-immigrant distinction here.

Her thought was that her webcam could only be useful for taking pictures of young children to share with family members in distant locations. For her, it was a tool for connecting about the real, the now, for bridging distances.

My mind jumped to web-culture specific memes, like this. I would use my new webcam to do something creative or expressive, then share it on the web. To a native, we see a new toy and think, "What kinds of interesting and creative activities can I invent in order to interact with my new tool?"

My mother wisely pointed out that this kind of perceptual shift has been going on for many years, long before recent technology ever involved a microchip. Her analogy was that when painting was originally developed, we used it to capture portraits of real life, to record history, and to preserve the moment. Then once photography came on the scene, painting became outdated for those purposes, and it took on a whole new life. She cited Picasso as an obvious example of someone who painted for a very different motive than to capture the visual realities of life. Instead, Pablo captured the realities of life, but through a distinctly new and creative lens.

All of these ruminations about the quickly changing world seem especially appropriate given what I came across in my morning reading of Soft Hay Will Catch You, a lovely collection of children's poems gathered by my friend Sandy Lyne. In his introduction he begins, "My parents were part of that remarkable generation who went from the horse and buggy to the walk on the moon, embracing more change than any generation in history knew." A very eloquent way, I think, of describing how the learning curve of life took a dramatic leap around that time.

All this leaves me to wonder about the changes that will inevitably appear in the lives of my future children. I'm slightly horrified to wonder-- what kind of music will they listen to? Perhaps more importantly, with what technology will they be natives, and I the immigrant? I spend a fair amount of my time "translating" for the brave immigrants in my life, but surely this will not always be the case. Something worth pondering...

Posted by Lisa at April 16, 2006 12:35 PM