08 October 2005

Youth, blogs and digiborigines

This is an important thing to grasp. It relates to the idea of digital immigrants and digital natives [digiborigines -my term, use it often and see if it gets in the Oxford dictionary]. Of course some immigrants are more integrated than others. I suspect that I am one such but I recognise that my kids do things on line that I don't do so much or so often.
"A generation has grown up using the internet as its primary means of communication, thanks to an early grasp of online communities and messaging services as well as simple technology allowing web users to launch a personal weblog, or blog, without any specialist technical knowledge. On average, people between 14 and 21 spend almost eight hours a week online, but it is far from a solitary activity. There are signs of a significant generation gap, and rather than using the internet as their parents do - as an information source, to shop or to read newspapers online - most young people are using it to communicate with one another."
Later reference.
Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | Young blog their way to a publishing revolution:

1 comment:

Milan said...

Now living several thousand kilometres from almost all of my friends, the internet is not only an important means of communicating with them, but the only one.

It seems to me that blogs have much to recommend them. They allow people to keep tabs on you as much or as little as they choose to. They introduce new information into a realm where anyone can locate and make use of it. They also provide useful practice in writing - particularly writing cogently and clearly over a short timespan.

"Spend and tax" not "tax and spend"

 I got a response from my MP which got me kind of mad. You'll see why as I reproduce it here. Apologies for the strange changes in types...