...we live in dangerous times do we not? Where words carry so much weight and come back and bite your proverbial arse for a long long time.
I'm no real believer in censorship, Shakespeare is full of comment that would get him banned from most public platforms today (My fridge door is covered with his insults) and culture (note I am careful to make a claim to ownership here!) is poorer for the mood of the times.
I recently read Ben Elton's Blind Faith, which has much in common with with Adams satirical outlook. It's a very easy read and makes you think about how easy it is to say the wrong thing for all the right reasons and more importantly how the right thing is not allowed to be said. From a more heavyweight angle I am increasingly reminded of how the language of our times now reflects the 'newspeak' of Orwell's Big Brother (not the TV show
. Politicians and business leaders refuse to commit with passion. It's hard to imagine any speeches on a par with the quality and richness of description of Churchill's or Ghandi's today for the increasing fear something wrong might be said.
A sorry place to be in.
It's well known on this forum I don't agree with Prensky's conclusion on Digital Immigrants and Natives but I am glad he had the chance to make them. They have made me think and argue my view and my own thoughts are clearer and my position stronger as a result.
As much as I love Douglas Adam's work and have enjoyed them in many mediums his 35 threshold comments irk me because they are defeatist and sad... but like Tony says they are also funny.
We all know people like who Adam's refers too but for me some are in their teens, twenties or forties and some find barriers to inquiry in some areas of life but never in others.
We often use the phrase 'learner engagement' but don't talk much about what it actually means. To be engaged, enthralled, captivated, a wonderful place to be in learning. Shouldn't we seek to be engaged throughout life? Isn't that what stops us falling behind?
I've wandered sorry...
Whenever we speak we search for metaphors and similes that help our points and let us connect with the audience. I don't think the Immigration Natives metaphor works, not because it is racist or ageist but because the conclusion doesn't work when thought out and picked apart. However, I think that Prensky's haunting soundbite is increasingly used in an ageist way where too many commentators make the wrong assumption that technology is beyond an age group simply because of the age.
On the racist point, no one seems to have said why it could be construed as racist. Prensky's metaphor seems to suggest that like the immigrant experience an older person has to adapt to Digital technology and the associated culture in the way an immigrant might chose to adapt to the culture of the land they move too. Immigration is a complex experience. I am the product of immigration on my mum's side, so I know first hand that for everyone the experience is different. I have also studied Social Anthropology and the sense of cultural identity we all carry is incredibly complex. It would perhaps be true to say there are times we are all immigrants and all natives.
I'll be bold and take the flak that might be coming. It's not racist to apply the immigration metaphor in this instance. It's a blunt use of a complex social situation so not necessarily well applied but that doesn't make it racist. It's more prejudicial to ignore these cultural events in our reflections. If we think about immigration in the terms of the prejudice shown in own field to older people and digital technology then in turn might that not hold up a mirror to society's treatment of immigrants?
As Tony says we need boldness and if I might add we need disagreement. We don't need disrespect or prejudice.
We also need eloquence. I am attending to many presentations devoid of inspiration and full of sterile neutral statements. Where ultimately nothing is said. It cripples thought and freezes progress. Lets not stay there..
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