Understanding the tech-savvy natives

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Imagine you've just stepped off the proverbial boat -- an old-world immigrant to a new land. You hardly speak the language; you're completely ignorant of the customs and conventions. You are greeted by a nephew, born in this new country, who has come to guide you from the dock.As you extend your luggage, weary from the voyage, he extends an impatient finger. Just a sec, he says, eyes glued to his cell phone. Lemme finish this text.Seven years ago, author Marc Prensky coined the terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant." Those of us born with a computer in the home, he explained, are essentially natives in a new world. Those of us born before the personal computer, the Internet and cellular technology are, for better or worse, immigrants to this world.There are immigrants who make the effort to assimilate into their new land as best they can, and there are those who stubbornly hold onto their old language and old customs. Success can be had both ways, but it's becoming harder and harder for an old-world holdout to understand the tech-savvy natives.Prensky calls our attention to the divide between "immigrant" high-school and college teachers and their "native" students, a gulf growing wider each year. But the divide is present elsewhere, between parents and children, managers and new associates, old hands and young upstarts.We do things differently -- we learn differently, we get our information in different ways, we seek enjoyment in different places. Whether or not the new way is better, the old road is rapidly aging. And riding that old road must be awfully uncomfortable, as only potholes and sore backs can explain its grouchy passengers.In a recent New York Times column, neo-curmudgeon Ben Stein airs his grievances against a new world of cellular servitude. Using an airplane as his example, he highlights the difference between passengers in-flight -- reading, listening to music, doing nothing much at all -- and those same passengers at landing. The phones light up, the Blackberries chirp to life and so on.Stein laments a loss of community in a society focused on PDAs and cell-phone screens. He goes on to wonder, what would life be like without our tools of electronic convenience? In his opinion, "we would be forced to think again."What Stein means is, we would be forced to think like immigrants again.Those born on the cusp of the Digital Revolution can understand both sides of the argument. We recognize many of the good things we've lost -- like day-to-day privacy, or uninterrupted hours of effort on one (just one!) task -- but we see the bright side as well. You could get a business call while walking down the street, but you can also walk down the street while you take a business call.The argument against community, however, is patently false. Any child of the pre-cellular suburbs can attest that the insular American experience didn't begin with video games and text messaging. In reality, the Great Internet Connection has created a global community unlike any in history. It is the worldwide Web, after all.Certain immigrants may grumble, but the community exists nonetheless. And all are welcome to join. It just helps if you speak the language.(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban and the easily amused. Contact him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)