Visitor or Resident?

For me this is not a simple question.  Before I can tackle Visitors and Residents I need to tackle Immigrants and Natives.  The later article which I have been handed no less than 15 times [Prensky M., (2001) "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1", On the Horizon, Vol. 9 Iss: 5, pp.1 – 6] is a faulty distinction.

However, even though as White  indicates, to equate Digital Immigrants as old and Digital Natives as younger is a flawed, there is some truth to it.  By definition I, like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, have to be classified as Digital Immigrants.  We were born before the technology, before the Internet, before the microprocessor, before the Hewlett-Packard calculator.  It makes no difference that I was programming (and getting paid for it) at the age of 12 and Gates and Jobs would mold and bring the technology to the world.  We were not born “into the technology”.  We, well that’s really presumptuous, they would help give birth to the technology.  We were/are not characteristic of what is meant when people refer to Digital Immigrants. We did not migrate as adults.  We are more like infants brought to this world by our parents. As such, we had no discernible accent so could sometimes pass for natives but in the truest sense were not.  In many ways we were digital parents.

So it is true for my classification as a visitor or a resident.    From the picture painted in the video I would have to be classified as a visitor.  However, I am really a damaged resident.  The only metaphor I can conjure up is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  I, in no way, mean to be little, or equate my issues to, what many of our incredibly dedicated arm services personnel suffer.  It is simply the only metaphor I have come up with to describe my situation.  I lived in this world when it was a wild frontier.  We didn’t reside in an established place.  We lived off the land as we explored, fought over, mapped and built places.  My personal journey, as I told my cohort in our first quarter together, is not one I am comfortable elaborating on.  Somewhere along the way I sideswiped an IUD and have never been able to fully integrate back into the digital society.  It is not because I am unable to master the technology or am afraid of identity theft.  Anyone who knows me knows it is not because I lack opinions, informed or otherwise, or am reticent to share them.  Something broke or became disconnected. 

For me, the Web is not a tool box although it is full of tools.  It is not a space to mill around in.  It is a place always under construction.   A place I was one of the first to enter, stake a claim and build.  The only memory of working with Steve Jobs I am willing to share right now is when  a lot of us were sitting around  (I think it was a break room at one of Apple’s early offices by Xerox Parc but it might have been at Xerox Parc)  commenting on how we never wanted to be those old timers saying “remember when….” We would rather hang out on the edge even if it meant we may go over the cliff.  Steve Jobs died building brilliantly on the edge.  Sadly I think I am an old timer who fell off the cliff and survived but was never the same.

The Visitor – Resident categorization is also not a continuum as described in the video.  I can make a case that I am at each end of the extreme.  To make this point I’ll simply match my dissertation methodology to the words in the brackets on White’s Prezi.  I am performing a very sophisticated statistical cluster analysis (quantitative end of quantitative research) to help select participants for a narrative inquiry (qualitative end of qualitative research). 

All classification schemes are simply a way of helping us explain observed phenomenon. Boundaries and edges are often hard to classify.

I am too depressed over personal setbacks and Steve Job’s death to delve into the issue any deeper at this time.