Friday, November 30, 2012

How to Spot a Digital Immigrant

Your neighbors in Palo Alto
How do you spot a spy? 

During WWII, Britain’s M-5 suggested that if an enemy spy was living next door, he would be young, fit, have a slightly odd cut to his clothing and eat strange chocolates.  Watch, too, for a scar or limp, M-5 said, since parachuting from airplanes was treacherous business in the 1940s.

How about today?  WikiHow (To Do Anything) suggests that you might have a spy next door if the person is educated, physically strong and highly intelligent (unless you live in Palo Alto, in which case that’s just your neighbor).   Also, look for an intermittent work history (unless you live in Silicon Valley, in which case that may be your next boss).

It seems spies, despite their best efforts, almost always give themselves away.

Once upon a time, digital immigrants were easy as pie to spot, like knowing that the guy with shorts and black socks, complaining that he didn't get enough ice in his drink in the Paris bistro was, well, an American.

You might recall not many years ago the person who didn't own a computer, "and I don’t see any need for one, either.  I can keep my recipes in a box, thank you.”  Today, that person is perfecting his or her shuffleboard.

There was, you might remember, the CEO who had his secretary print all of his email so he could answer each message by hand, or perhaps by dictation.  (For you Gen Xer’s, write me and I’ll explain “dictation.”  Gen Yer’s, write me and I’ll explain the concept of a “secretary.”  Those younger, write and I'll explain "email.")  This was the same person with a wall of Rolodex across his desk, the prequel to the LinkedIn LION with 10,000 close, personal associates.




The other day I called a monument business to have an addition done to my parents’ gravestone and suggested to the nice receptionist that I email a picture of what I wished to have done.  She said—and to her credit, she laughed—“We don’t have email.”  I asked, inappropriately (and I’m sorry, too, but sometimes it just comes out): “Do you have indoor plumbing?”  Again, to her credit, she laughed.  That’s a digital immigrant.

Though, in retrospect, I guess people who make their living carving stone might indeed be the last to adopt email. 

Today, like spies, most digital immigrants are much, much harder to spot.  There has been time to learn and adjust.  Time to plot.  Time to deceive.

The other day I received a pretty good looking unsolicited resume by fax.  A bell went off.  The fax machine, like our home phone, has become the convenient repository for all incomings about which  I know I don’t have to bother.  (Do you need financing on your accounts receivable?  Do you want to win a free vacation?  Send money—I’m stuck in Johannesburg.  Hi, this is Mitt Romney.  Etc.)

Then, I thought, this might be a clever kind of “uncola” ploy so that the resume would not get lost in a mountain of email.  Cool.  But then I saw three things: a home phone (not mobile), no date on the education, and a Hotmail address.  Hotmail?  How about Prodigy?  How about "jobapplicant@ARPAnet"?  I had just seen the black socks and heard the loud complaining about too little ice.  Busted.

How do you text?  Watch a child.  It’s all thumbs and fast.  Wicked fast.  If you are poking with a single finger you get credit for texting but have been outed by the odd cut of your clothing.  Only digital immigrants poke.

If you let slip around the water cooler that you “have to be home tonight to see your favorite show on TV,” you are busted.  Your digital friends will be watching it on their tablets on Sunday morning over coffee and  a bagel.

Siri is a foreign country now in revolt?  Ubuntu is the dog from that 1960s kids' cartoon?  Linux will suck his thumb on an upcoming Christmas special? 

Wait.  You have Pong on your desktop?  Really.  You get credit for having a digital game. And a desktop.  But you are busted, Mr. Pacman.

Once upon a time, saying “I don’t have a computer” made you a digital immigrant.  Then it became, “I don’t do email.”  Now, “I’ve never had a Facebook account” is a pretty good sign, like a limp caused by a tangled parachute in 1944.  Next, “I don’t Tweet.”  That’s eating weird chocolate.  After that, “Google glasses look stupid and will cause accidents.”  Later still, “Nobody is putting a digital chip in my frontal lobe.”  It’s the steady and predictable progression of busted digital immigration.

The same is true for mobility.  “I don’t have a cellphone.”   That’s wearing shorts and black socks.  “I have a cellphone but don’t need a smartphone.”  That’s complaining about the lack of ice in your drink.  “I don’t bring my smartphone on vacation cause I want to be off the grid.”  That, my friend, is the 8% tip you leave after all that ugly complaining.  You are busted.

Digital natives were born on the grid.  In their land--far, far across the digital ocean blue--there is no such thing as off the grid.  You will never visit that land. You could not get there with a full tank of gas, even on the Space Shuttle.

Unless you were born after 1995, I promise, you are a digital immigrant and you will be exposed.  

You can text, tweet and tumblr all you want, but you cannot hide. 

We have our ways.

8 comments:

  1. Funny and true. I have a friend whose father misunderstood LOL for "lots of love." He began using it freely in texts and email when trying to cheer up friends and family after bad news. "Your father passed away. So sorry. LOL." This went on for months, unanswered, until his son lost a job. "I know it's scary, but it's for the best. LOL." The son called to clear things up. Mortifying...but then very, very funny.

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  2. I am so, so busted. And expecting credit for being part of the generation that produced this digital landscape is just another sign that I'm not a native.

    But I refuse to recreate the mistake made by so many of the earlier "move to a new land with only the clothes on your back and a great hope" immigrants. They left everything behind, depriving their children of the opportunity to become multilingual and America of the strengths their culture-of-origin had to offer.

    When a blight wipes out our monoculture factory agribusiness food supply, it's the small conservators of heirloom crops that will save us.

    I'll readily admit to being slow to adopt new technologies, despite the aberration of paying 1500 1970's dollars for an InteColor 8001G intelligent monitor. We got our first CD player once they stopped making LP's, and I suspect I'll get a smart phone once I become a pain to other people with my "not smart but it texts and makes phone calls and is smaller than yours" cell phone. The elderly ladies in our choir do not have e-mail, and always need to be contacted separately with general choir news. That's the kind of "becoming a pain" I mean. I already annoy my sister-in-law because I expect her to e-mail me instead of text.

    But though my work involves sitting at a computer (by free choice!) much of the day, I fight against the grid. And I write letters -- the kind the USPS delivers. My cell phone isn't "smart" but I leave it off most of the time anyway. I use Facebook daily, but don't play games or use apps, and find status updates most useful for pointing to posts on my blog. I guess I'm a digital immigrant who refuses to assimilate fully.

    But there's a better reason than age and a dislike of Apple for not having a smart phone -- though trust me, I covet them. My little phone costs me $100 PER YEAR for all the minutes and texts I need.

    Financial responsibility is definitely a heritage breed these days, but one that is worth preserving.

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  3. I'm a little out of my depth here, Linda, but I know there was an "Arts and Crafts" movement to counter the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution, and Nick Carr recently posted a note on "rematerialization" as a sign we're getting tired of chasing pixels on a screen all day (see http://www.roughtype.com/?p=2196). So, there is an important place for those who preserve a culture's "heirloom seeds" cause you never know when they're going to come in handy--and if you have fun doing the preservation, all the better. I am fully engulfed in the digital world like you, but am still constitutionally unable to read the Sunday "New York Times" on anything but paper, part of how I get outed each week. . .As for churches and digitization, I believe they all lost an important step when they decided it was OK (K?) to solicit casseroles for the church supper via email instead of by phone or face-to-face over coffee hour, but I digress. . .Funny story, Emilie! My wife and daughters sometimes attach a "K" to a text or email, meaning (I hope) "Kiss." I deal with an executive who uses "K" to mean "OK." When I text him "Please send me that Excel file" and he responds "K," I always do a double take. . .Finally, I may have missed the year by a little. Our youngest was born in 1995 and she thinks the real digital flood was in the last ten years--in other words, she could feel it coming on is herself a little bit of a digitial immigrant as well. Of course, that could just be her still being mad that we wouldn't buy her a cellphone in first grade. . . !

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  4. I'm busted too.

    However, my brain is getting slower with age and that frontal lobe chip is sounding pretty good. When it finally arrives, you'll find me (the gray haired guy) lined up in front of the clinic with all the Gen Z kids.

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  5. Thanks, DeWitt & Mike! Perhaps, Mike, we'll just start naming the generations after their birth technology. Generation iPad. Generation X-box. Someday, Generation Singularity. Save me a place in line for the frontal lobe chip.

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  6. I do not have a Facebook account. High winds during my jump blew me away from the LZ. I landed in a Verizon 4G cell tower.

    Could you hand me that cane over there?

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  7. Sometimes the guys furthest in the lead appear to be trailing. Maybe they just know something the rest of us don't?!

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