Why 'Digital Natives' Aren't
Either I have the most brilliant students in the entire world (which may, in fact, be the case) or a lot of other teachers, parents, and pundits aren't payng attention to what young people are thinking and saying these days. I spend a lot of my time reading books and articles that have a lot to say about what "digital natives"--those young people born around 1988 and after--do or do not think, do, act, say, believe, desire, and know. I also spend a lot of time reading exceptionally thoughtful, introspective, and engaged blogs by my students in "This Is Your Brain on the Internet." The mismatch between what the pundits say about students today and what my students say about themselves and our world is not only dramatic but inspiring. I much prefer the inner and outer worlds my students describe to the ways in which that world is described by those who (may I say it?) are no longer young.
Yesterday, four students showed us a video they'd made about surveillance and privacy in the 21st century. Rather than being a single-track, single-position video, it turned the topic in four different ways: first, government surveillance of the populace post Patriot Act, including comparisons between government surveillance in the U.S. and in London and other major urban centers; second, individuals turning the cameras back onto the government for protest or simple exposure of offenses; third, individuals spying on one another in the workplace (bosses using spyware to observe and police their employes), at school (principals and teachers monitoring student use of computers), or just in everyday life, peer to peer; and fourth, one institution (it happened to be our own, Duke) and its surveillance of those on campus. In this fourth section, the video makers quite brilliantly (and wittily) surprised us with footage of other members of their class going about their business, utterly unaware that they were being filmed or that they would end up in a video made as a final collaborative, multimedia class assignment.
The students next led us in a provocative discussion of all the ways the "panopticon" of surveillance--the eyes always watching us without our being able to return the gaze--occupies our lives. They shared an article on the idea of the panopticon going all the way back to Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century and as developed by philosopher Michel Foucault's idea of self-regulation as a resulting of fearing or suspecting that unseen, disapproving and all-powerful eyes are tracking and recording our movements.
This is interesting because many of the books and articles on digital natives insist they don't care about privacy, that they have no real sense of being observed and, if they do, they don't care about the moral, political, ethical, or social implications of this changed view of privacy. Well, dear pundits, they do care. They are concerned. But they have also inherited this world that an older generation has made and now have to figure out a way to live in it.
Here's another brilliant insight from this week's blogs. One of my very smart students notes that he plays online games about twenty hours a week. He is always in class, always has the assignments done, participates thoroughly, and is a superb student. What's not to like? Yet the word from the pundits is that, if he is playing twenty hours a week of his time on online games, something is drastically, terribly wrong with him. In his blog, he turned the tables. He writes, I constantly ask why others, who dont waste 20 hours a week playing video games, havent done amazing things with their life?"
Great question. What are all these people who aren't "wasting 20 hours a week" on line doing that is so impressive, dazzling, world-changing that it puts those playing games or social networking or texting or tweeting to shame? Perhaps they are spending their time writing a lot of unsubstantiated blather about the foibles and failures of an imaginary species of being called "digital natives."
- Cathy Davidson's blog
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Mostly I Spend My Time Dreaming of Butterflies
Don't you think that your students are being terribly conservative, Cathy? I mean, aren't we living in the "End of the panoptic system" because we've lost the "objective space... and the omnipotence of the despotic gaze"? (Baudrillard, which I just happen to be fortuitously re-reading) To hearken back to Bentham and all that utilitarian ooze seems so, well, suburban. These kids, these "good students" (model students, even? I mean, heck, I know what happens when the term "good" or "model" is applied to minority ethnicities) seem to be entrenched in a resurging system, one that was supposed to have been tore down and replaced with multi-directional achievement, where the kid playing WoW 20 hours a week could flunk out of college and claim that he was too invested in the hyperreality of his half-troll female persona. Instead, he's like the model wife, who's able to balance her family responsibilities and her work and still look like she just stepped out of the salon.
I know I'm exaggerrating and extrapolating but I was only just recently writing a blog post about Baudrillard and how it applies to all our digital media and sending an email off to someone referring to digital humanists who seem intent on using digital media to re-create some utopian, early 20th century vision of society, the academy and achievement. Seriously, isn't there something wrong if the current generation of born digital types is actually everything we--their cultural imperialist oppressors--want them to be?
Sorry I'm not following this logic!
Hi, Elijah, I can't tell where your parodic, hyperbolic tone is leaving off here. I think it is GREAT that they worry about surveillance (I don't see that as them feeling as we cultural imperialists want them to feel) and the point of the student who games 20 hours a week isn't about what he does---he happens to be outstanding but that is my pedagogical aside. His insight is a valid one. No matter what he is doing 20 hours a week with his gaming the snarling snarky critique of "his generation" always has this pompous tacit assumption that, if he were not gaming, he would be spending the 20 hours a week making the world a better place. He flips that back at his accusers, saying, hey, what are YOU doing with your extra time that improves our world. Maybe I'm misreading you but wariness about governmentality and surveillance doesn't at all feel suburban. Quite the contrary. Their critique was astute, and I like very much the way they kept turning it and turning it again, to give a full and complex picture. Again, I may be misreading your tone here. Thanks for writing.
I don't think they're worried about surveillance at all
I wasn't trying for parody or hyperbole, though I know that in purposefully engaging in a counter-narrative I was probably less understandable than had I presented bulleted points. I think it is not the wariness that I have a problem with, it's the packaged wariness, the critique that still remains embedded within the system that it critiques--the safe, standardized response (My grades are still high, these cameras are watching us) as opposed to the unsafe response that attempts, somehow, to escape from the expectations placed upon them by the social reproducers who have established themselves. I think it would be much less legitimate to claim that high grades are justification for gaming, or that some putative social activity is a suitable replacement for gaming, than if he had, much as the gender studies folks did in the recent discussion, embraced his 20-hour a week gaming as some kind of experiential, hyperreal "better" than the world he's in. That's his implicit claim (and the implicit claim that we as a society are so uncomfortable with) but instead he sinks back into the old regime and justifies his new media activity based on old, traditional standards. Hence my response, that I'm dreaming of butterflies in my spare time, rather than playing World of Warcraft, because I think it's a suitable rejoinder to an already unsuitable question.
As for the surveillance project being astute, I would argue that it does little more than reinforce the delusion that we live in a modern version of 1984, which ignores the reality of who is surveilling whom. The modern social media user self-surveils constantly, and surveils on their locality as well, so I can't see how focusing on video cameras, which are about as old as utilitarianism, has any bearing on modern concepts of surveillance. Your students should have critically engaged with their own recording of every event they take part in (through twitter, foursquare, facebook and everything else), and whether or not that activity somehow constrains their and their peer group's formation of identities, or whether a traditional concept of privacy, championed by folks like you and I (Part of that wonderful cultural imperialism that we assume they want, because we know it's good for them), is not compatible with the fundamentally different structure of the society they're producing.
I hope I'm not sounding aggressive, Cathy, I've just been reading too much post-modernism lately, and I'm trying my best to be as critical of structure as I can be.
We're passing one another
Sorry, what you say they should have done is exactly what they did. They BEGAN with a melodramatic movie of 1984 and then deconstructed it with three powerful other, counter narratives. I guess I didn't make that clear.
prensky's next step--digital wisdom
great post, cathy. thanks for sharing your experience with this project. your students clearly did an awesome job with this surveillance topic. as a student, i always loved incorporating unexpected, pertinent stuff to projects like your students did with bentham and foucault. teachers used to eat that sort of intertextuality with a fork and spoon, and i can see they still do! :) glad to know i could still get the job done--maybe even at duke!
more to the point, i think prensky's (2009) discussion of digital wisdom has something good to add to this conversation. you know what he said about digital natives and digital immigrants, but he's realized how flawed this model is, just like you did. the truth is that growing up around lots of tech doesn't make one wiser. using the tech effectively, efficiently, and wisely is the key, and prensky notes that this sort of skill set (digital wisdom) isn't reserved exclusively for young people.
prensky writes with regard to the digitally wise, "They know that just knowing how to use particular technologies makes one no wiser than just knowing how to read words does. Digital wisdom means not just manipulating technology easily or even creatively; it means making wiser decisions because one is enhanced by technology." presumably, these decisions include those pertaining to privacy.
as the debates rage on regarding the implications of all the new tech in our lives, it's important to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water. prensky's useful digital wisdom model is a next step in this conversation, but it's one that likely couldn't have been taken without the (now outmoded) digital native/immigrant model paving the way.
Wiser
Thanks for this interesting response. Digital Wisdom is highly underrated! Thanks for sharing some with us.